Were They Able to Say Goodbye
All the time we spent together
Not ceasing to explore
You have to love what’s close to you
Not what’s far.
Were they able to say goodbye?
I haven’t been able to say goodbye. The greatest suffering is in not being close. My grandma once told
Me, there was something in me,
Were they able to say goodbye?
We shall not cease from exploration /
At the end of all our exploring /
Will be to arrive where we started /
And know the place for the first time
T. S. Eliot had written that, in the Four Quartets
So maybe it’s that local quality, the quality that commits me
To this place. To this time.
***
I remember, so many banquets
So much fan-fare
It doesn’t matter
If they called me by my Chinese name
Until one day I decided my name was my Christian name, Alice
Were they able to say goodbye?
I used to think that identity was black, or white
That you had to be either, or
I didn’t understand
There was an inside core
I understood, to put down the shackles
To not be bound in shackles,
To understand the twin
The twin that existed within me.
What of the difficult childhood?
<pause>
At a banquet table, at the banquet table,
I didn’t feel like Xiao Liu, or a fifteen year-old Chinese girl
“Don’t forget you’re Chinese”
“You can’t be European.”
I’m not European.
Was I ever European?
There was my white family, yes
But there was also many Chinese families
One in particular and none in particular and
It felt like it was never over
All the time we spent together
Were they able to say goodbye?
<pause>
It’s better existing even if I’m existing without a limb
Liminal though it is
It’s interesting what we do to find healing
It’s better to exist, even if existing is without meaning.
Thpugh meaning, like a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater
Is seen through the eyes of the beholder
I wish I had never traversed the world, two continents
I have a badge, from Camden market, the birth of punk rock
In England
That said: “I have seen the Western world”
But had I?
How much rejection can I take, in a lifetime?
In London
In Beijing
In the obvious clime between the two worlds?
Were They Able to Say Goodbye <pause>
Now, I can willingly participate in the obscene
That middle point
The neither black, the neither white
The neither square, and either circle,.
I didn’t want to be an apple, I didn’t want to be a pear,
Even though, when people, when they saw me
They said, be an apple, be a pear
Was I European?
Was I ever European?
Was I European?
Was I ever able to blend in?
By Alice Xin Liu