Blog Post #8 "The youngest Daughter"

Poem:

The sky has been dark

for many years.

My skin has become as damp

and pale as rice paper

and feels the way

mother’s used to before the drying sun   

parched it out there in the fields.

      Lately, when I touch my eyelids,

my hands react as if

I had just touched something

hot enough to burn.

My skin, aspirin colored,   

tingles with migraine. Mother

has been massaging the left side of my face   

especially in the evenings   

when the pain flares up.

This morning

her breathing was graveled,

her voice gruff with affection   

when I wheeled her into the bath.   

She was in a good humor,

making jokes about her great breasts,   

floating in the milky water

like two walruses,

flaccid and whiskered around the nipples.   

I scrubbed them with a sour taste   

in my mouth, thinking:

six children and an old man

have sucked from these brown nipples.

I was almost tender

when I came to the blue bruises

that freckle her body,

places where she has been injecting insulin   

for thirty years. I soaped her slowly,

she sighed deeply, her eyes closed.

It seems it has always

been like this: the two of us

in this sunless room,

the splashing of the bathwater.

In the afternoons

when she has rested,

she prepares our ritual of tea and rice,   

garnished with a shred of gingered fish,

a slice of pickled turnip,

a token for my white body.   

We eat in the familiar silence.

She knows I am not to be trusted,   

even now planning my escape.   

As I toast to her health

with the tea she has poured,

a thousand cranes curtain the window,

fly up in a sudden breeze.

Reaction:

Right away, the title suggests that the poem will be based around the youngest daughter in a family. The title makes me think of two things: how the youngest child is often the most spoiled or the most responsible. Like, either they got everything they wanted because they were the youngest, or they had to do everything themselves because everyone else had responsibilities of their own.
The poem is about the youngest daughter in a family having to take care of her mouth in her old age, all the while feeling both loving and bitter (bitter because she has to sacrifice her freedom to stay and take care of her mother.) The daughter wishes to run away, and the mother knows this.
There seems to be a very strained warmth between the two. The language in the poem suggests that the mother is affectionate towards the daughter ("her voice gruff with affection," "mother has been messaging the side of my face"), and in turn the daughter takes care of the mother. However, there is a great bitterness that comes through in the tone, through the way the speaker describes their own unhealthy appearance,  and the endless duties and rituals she must perform. These experiences seem endless to the narrator ("It has always/ been like this:/ the two of us/ in this sunless room"). The "sunless room" creates a very dreary, sad feeling, and adds to the bitterness of the poem.
I think the poem helps to demonstrate the complexities of parent-child relationships. The daughter loves her mother, but she feels trapped and resentful toward her mother as well. I think that even if they aren't going through this exact situation, this is relatable to a lot of people. I think that children (including teenagers, adults, etc.) can often develop these bitter feelings towards their parents based on how they act. Uh, for example, if my mom were really vehement about me not going to college in california, and maybe guilt tripped me into staying, I'd probably be bitter about it, I'd feel like she was holding me back. So I think it just presents an emotional relationship that younger people (or even the parents, knowing that they're maybe trapping their kids but unable to do differently) can relate to.