Beneath the stone arch, graying women dance
in unison—they sway their hips, step right, flutter
arms outward like butterfly wings, hands cupped
skyward as if to receive a benediction. The woman
in the center—the tall one—wears a red sweater,
white cropped pants, butter yellow visor tied
with a ribbon over short permed curls. Above her,
carved in stone: 和喜园—peace joy garden.
For a moment, I am winded. Back turned, she looks—
they look—like an idea I once had of my mother.
She wears something like this in a photo from long ago,
in another city by another sea that wouldn’t be
home. In the photo, she is younger than me, still
new to this country—I am nowhere, stardust yet
to settle. In the photo, she sits on a pier, right leg crossed
over the other—she smiles wide, left
of the camera, eyes crinkled behind plastic sunglasses.
In the photo, her world is cracked open
like an oyster shell—this woman might one day live
by the sea, slurp an oyster’s sweet brine,
watch the sun rise over ocean waves like a golden
pearl, watch her child grow up, grow old.
In the photo, the future lives next to the modal verb
might. In the future, imagination exists
in the perfect tense—I imagine she will have lived
in peace and joy. In a perfect future, I imagine
her present, continuous, picking ripe loquats
in a garden, dancing beneath a stone arch.
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