To the little girl in a village home I never met
I've never been proud of you,
your bottled-up self and penny-saving habits.
Time and again you discouraged me, saying
would you stop dreaming.
Only the rich could afford a hobby.
Van Gogh was never famous until he died.
I forgot the girl you once were, who sat all day
in a dim village home — faded wallpaper, a dial-knob TV,
a tarpaulin bed on the verandah — thinking
today I'm going to die but no one is even watching
because your mother had a long way to walk back
uphill at the pace of bound feet. Your father existed
in your imagination across the green hills, and your ears
still echoed with his instruction: just call HSBC if you
need money and they will give you. Plenty.
How on earth your mother escaped from Shandong
to Kowloon and survived, I couldn't imagine.
The day I stood in a gown at the Sheldonian,
listened to all that Latin, I couldn't shrug off
this girl I never met, who never finished
the village primary and used to stare
at the sea all day, dreaming of Australia.
Copyright Credit: Jennifer Wong, "To the little girl in a village home I never met" from Letters Home. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Wong. Reprinted by permission of Nine Arches Press.
Source: Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020)