By Ariel Zhang

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This is a story woven together with fragments of memories, notes, and bunnies. This is a medley of short-lived relics. This is a song.

My mother doesn’t know love.

~ ~ ~

I don’t know how to draw bunnies. I was never much of an artist. 

My only art teacher was my mom, when I was little. She would hand me a paper note written in fluttering letters. The words danced when you weren’t looking. How to turn on the stove. How to boil potatoes, to cook the chewiest rice. And a little hand-drawn bunny smiling at me from the corner. We never said I love you, but that was our way of loving.

— —

Over the years, I’ve watched and observed her from a distance. 
I saw the pools forming in her belly, where she birthed me 
in seabed fissures. She’d hide her words in her lungs 
when no one was looking. I learned to hear her breathe. 
That was a sign of life.

~ ~ ~

After collecting hundreds of chalk-white notes, after kindling thousands of fluttering words that lived in my mom’s reflection beneath the kitchen lights, I still can’t draw the perfect bunnies. I’m not an artist like my mom.

— —

But these are my words, not hers. Perhaps this is only a mirage of 
her inside my mind. Perhaps she lives only in my slippery shadows, 
flickering between the words said and unsaid when I was too 
young to remember.

~ ~ ~

The nights my mom would come home, she slept in my bed because she didn’t want to be alone. I kept a warm glass of water by the bed in case she got thirsty in the middle of the night. I left her a note before I went to school. I told her where I was and when I’d be home. I never drew any bunnies because I wasn’t an artist like that.

— —

Aren’t we rebirthed from forgets.

~ ~ ~

I remember, she wore scarves of fall. Of orange, crimson, and some all the colors at once. I know grace can’t be passed down by blood because she had the grace of fall, of a million falling leaves. 

— —

These words are incomplete. 

~ ~ ~

My mother and I, we are a collage of notes. A photocopy of a photocopy of the words said in silence. Of the meals we cooked alone. Of warm glasses of water.

— —

Not broken, just incomplete.

~ ~ ~

Years later, I always made your lunches. And I would put a note in your lunch box and draw little bunnies in the corners, even when I didn’t feel like an artist. You never notice. Was our language lost just like that?

— —

I wish love would just be enough.

~ ~ ~

Please don’t be angry with me on the days I leave at night. Please don’t be angry that I missed your recitals and wasn’t there at your graduation. 

I wish loving you would be enough. 

— —

This is the unfinished medley of my mom. A prayer. A song. A dance. 
A beautiful, beautiful dance.

~ ~ ~

I don’t know how to draw bunnies. But I am forever looking for bunnies, for you. 

— —

Process

I was inspired by the relationships in my life—the feeling of dancing through pages of our lives together while not being able to ask what page number or chapter we were on. The feeling of drowning but at least knowing we were drowning together. The feeling of remembering how to breathe, how to draw, how to say a name.

While writing this piece, I gained a more profound vision and understanding of the people around me. And my love for them only grew. I think that’s a part of what writing does. It gives meaning.

To me, writing is almost like weaving a tapestry. When you interlace words together to create a story, they form a quilt of various colors and dimensions. I wanted to create a poem constructed of unfinished fragments to show that each piece of writing is truly greater than the sum of its parts.