An open battery rib-cage. Wrinkles gnawing up a home-button. Where I used to litter everywhere

From a sea of scribbled letters, unfiled pages brewed with snot.

Before I’d lose track she collects me. Always, down lends a hand to pick up

All the way from her youth, red pamphlets, thick bangs, and double-braids tied into a swarm

Of bees, made in metal, whizzing to her ears: don’t marry

And up comes the tourmaline eyes. The emerald quilt. The month-old picture, wilted cigars.

Nu Er rolls over like a train that smelled of bloom-caster. Straight-headed to unbraid hair

And paper-wrap legs. What her sister screamed in nemesis she soothed, collecting her blood.

Back then she was not as good at collecting. But almost as brilliant, her 28-bicycles estranged, a fiend

Of the jade cuffs her Ma had made her wear. Ma whispered to her ear: don’t marry

The half-worn prayer, the Potala monk. Ripples against thin air like a gunslinger.

And down falls the jade of her hands, a tiny imprint, a tiny foot. A tiny cringe, a tiny Ma.

Ma pours over us like a thousand rivers had overflown her lips. Dawned

From dreams on the balcony: a 24K ring, a dress, a water-sogged license, a dad.

I grew up in constant fear that I’d learn to collect. My Ma from the sink, where she sits laughing

In a pool of spring water she’d harbor from her dosage.

And my Laolao, next to her, braiding the fuzz into a blotch of silent yearns

Don’t marry. The misguided lands. The lost earbud. The bland, over-priced, overseas calls. Her hands

Reach down to pick me up.

I woke with reminiscence in my jaw.