Via Negativa

Black tie, no shorts or T's, no flip-flops. My husband 
reminds me it also means a set of rules enabling 

computers to communicate with each other, despite 
differences in their processors or design— 

I imagine rows of computers humming and 
chattering in a darkened writing lab, then falling 

silent when someone comes in and turns on the lights. 
Sometimes protocol can seem like the scar that's there 

as reminder of some kind of trauma—how in many 
Asian families, including our own, the pantry is never 

organized just for neatness or regularity in shape, 
size, and gradation of containers. The 25-lb. bag of rice 

will only fit in one corner of the guest room. Nothing 
is either just too much, or too little. Nothing is out 

of place or thrown away. There are little tins of sardines 
in tomato sauce stacked next to a bag filled with every 

soy sauce packet from every takeout meal we've ordered 
since the pandemic, next to 3 large containers of Norton 

salt, with the spout. A sniff test usually convinces  
we can eat packaged food items a little past their sell-by 

or expiry dates. How many times have we heard  
uncles' and grandparents' stories of eating only a palm-

ful of rice flavored with salt for months during the war?
A chapter title in a book—Readers Like Pleasure

but They Adore Pain—makes me stop and wonder
if this is true, and how. A woman sizzled a wet rag

in a hot pan  just so neighbors passing her kitchen window
would hear the sound and not think they had nothing to eat.  

When the pain that shoots down
from her right hip to her leg returns,
she wonders if it has something to do
with air pressure, or the rain, or
the humidity and all the recent swings
in weather. Where did she read 
that the body is its own barometer,
also its most faithful timekeeper? 
Coming from the store, she hefts
the grocery bags like they are 
weights at the gym; she pins
her shoulders back, as she is always
reminded to do. She tries to walk
more, move more, push and lift
while trying to find that center.
The dark fades later every day,
but she knows it is only being true
to its own season. She likes 
the quiet more and more. How 
much time is there for feeding 
the senses with remaining pleasure,
for soothing the heart's agitations?
The rain starts up again. She hears
a newly clear pinging just because 
the gutters were cleaned that weekend.

"Is everything good also bad?"
                                   ~ Laura Read

I'm not good either at driving. I came
to driving late. Unlike the way kids here
take driver's ed in high school, I was almost
30 when I got behind the wheel. My father
had a Mitsubishi Galant, which he bought 
but himself could not drive. He hired a man 
named Bruno with one lazy eye and a head 
of white hair to drive for him 6 days a week 
and as needed. I guess I'm good enough
at driving local, but terrified of getting on 
the expressway. That's why on the whole,
I think I'm a bad driver. I'm also bad at reading
maps. I look for landmarks to memorize:
gnarled trees, old buildings, the high school
across from the middle school; the church-
yard where every Wednesday in summer
there's a farmer's market. But I'm pretty good 
at reading the room for weird energy signals
coming from whoever's there, who I'd rather
not shake hands with. I'm good at finishing 
most tasks I've been given, and bad at saying 
no. I'm good at poaching eggs with no need
for fancy equipment. An old, dented pan, 
boiling water; I turn off the heat, slide each 
egg in, and cover the lot with a lid. I leave it 
undisturbed while I toast bagels and set 
the table. Then I lift them gently out of
the water. Do you also find it hard not to wear 
your heart on your sleeve? I'm bad  at hiding 
my own true feelings. But for the most part, 
when asked to pass the butter and the butter
knife, I remember I'm not supposed to point
the tip outward toward its recipient. What
am I supposed to hold then—the blade?

When my father was buried, cremation
was not yet the common practice it is today.

So he is buried in the northwestern section
of the Baguio Cemetery. But wait, all of a sudden

I'm not so sure. I think he's buried in a crypt, meaning 
his coffin with he himself in it, or what used to be 

the shell of himself dressed in his best dark suit 
and tie down to his best polished shoes, was slid into

a cement rectangle, then sealed, then given a coat
of white paint and a marble marker. I can't remember

who decided on any of these things, since I was young
and petrified by this colossal, new grief. There was a brief

argument about what direction he should face, as if it would 
change anything if his head pillowed on satin pointed toward 

the mountains and the space between, where the sun 
went down each evening. You might think this is just another 

poem, again, about grieving my father's death. It's been 
nearly five decades but I can still see his hands, laid one atop

the other; and between them, a rosary broken to signify how, 
despite our sadness, the rest of us weren't ready to follow.

Where is she now, the one you say left you
              in the swamp of your late awakening? 
And where is the one you pined for in dream 
             after waking dream? She and I are one 
and the same. You think only one of us halved
            her heart when she left you. You think
leaving means only that you could not see 
            the marks our bodies left in space: finger 
trails in a spill of flour and sugar, but not  
            enough wisps of hair to embroider
your name on a pillowcase edge. She comes
            to me when both of us are nearly 
flattened by the unpredictability of time, and
            one of us tells the other she can rest.