HANDWRITING

a poem about forgetting where you're from

I wish life still tasted like my grandmother’s handwriting—
blue veins of ink bleeding through yellow paper,
loops so soft they could bruise your heart
if your eyes lingered past the mercy point.

Her kitchen still hums in the sunlight somewhere,
flour dust floating like ghosts of all the things I forgot to learn.
She’s showing me how to knead the world into something sweet,
and I’m too young to know I’ll forget the rhythm of her wrists,
too young to know I’ll grow up afraid of remembering.

She doesn’t see the girl who’ll flinch at her own tenderness,
who’ll bury the scent of cheap detergent and forgiveness under city noise,
who’ll run from the warmth because it cuts clean
like something that never learned to pretend.

Somewhere, it’s still afternoon forever,
and the dough still rises without me—
my hands clean, my heart filthy with wanting it back.

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I wish life still felt the way my grandmother’s handwriting used to look. // Worn-out pages and blue ink curling into letters my own fingers could never replicate. // It’s still sunny in her old kitchen, she’s teaching me how to bake. // She doesn’t know I will never carry on the movements of her hands. // She doesn’t know I will become too scared to speak of her memory at all. // She doesn’t know I will run away and hide simply because it hurts so bad.

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