You've missed my first baseball game
You've missed my birthday party
You've missed my graduation ceremony
I was angry, then disappointed
but Mom and my older sister didn't say anything
Their silence meant that something had gone wrong
Mom decided that we should move
after I asked what does “treason” mean, and
one day my sister came home from school with
a black eye and skinned knuckles
What if Dad comes home and can't find us?
I wished to ask but I did not, afraid to
get an answer I did not want to hear, until
I realized Mom and sis have been talking about you with
past tense, so I knew you were killed
by the state pledging to protect its people
with disciplines and orders, and
awe to the authority
We can be sad, but never feel ashamed
Mom said during praying before dinner
in a whisper
Dad, I dreamed you giving away your body
to the tree roots stretching for nutrients
They grab your head, your neck, your arms and legs
and your heart, your will, your personal history
in the depraved earth
So they will be able to resist
the coming storms
C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's past dictatorship: Impossible to Swallow and The Surveillance. Currently she is working on Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, and she won the Strands Lit Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.