Wendy Chen

Eating Bitterness

They tell me my mother is good at chi ku
which is to say eating bitterness
which is to say able to endure great suffering.

From Old English, biternys refers first
to grief,

then taste,
which is to say that it all ends up
at the same place:

bitter black medicine dripping
from a wooden spoon
my aunt stirred slowly over a stovetop.
It’s sweetened with honey, she told me
though I couldn’t taste the sweetness.

I drank the first cup
to please my family
but the second one
I refused.

Arrival

My hairdresser tells me the guides have spoken to her. They’ve instructed her
to give me some crystals to place beneath my bed. Selenite, she explains, keeps
the nightmares away. For days afterward, I have the most terrible of dreams. A
man who I believe is my father falls from a great height onto some marble steps
at the edge of a pool and snaps his spine in two. He can only float in the water
and so I push him along a bright blue river. But did she say keep them away or
absorb? I wake up, my fingers swollen from clenching them so tightly.

Then, one day, I have the most beautiful dream. My sister and I walk up a spi-
ral staircase that never ends. The walls are covered with the softest black velvet.
Neither of us is in a hurry. We aren’t afraid, no matter how high we climb. The
wedding that awaits us at the top of the spire is forever arriving.