inventory of water
mother, i paint myself in two minutes flat—
black ink bleeding into hanji the way
ducks disappear into lake water, counting
shellfish or prayers, who can say?
the artist residency window frames
a forest that could be seoul, could be
sài gòn, could be anywhere we've learned
to carry our dead. clouds gather
like ancestors over my bowl of rice,
kimchi breathing its fermented history.
i wonder if the ducks know they're holy,
diving for thirty seconds, forty, more—
lungs burning the way mine do
reaching for your ghost. the skylight opens
above my meal like an eye, like god
watching me eat my inheritance:
salt, time, the recycled moisture
of every woman who stirred the pot
before me. in the painting, my face
dissolves—not disappearing, but becoming
water, becoming the space between
what is living and what is merely
a shell. mother, when i surface,
i am both the duck and the counting.
