Retrieving

My uneven pulse
beats into the ground as I bury
this plot of ginseng. I flatten my palm on the dirt, color
replenishing the creases. 奶奶 unfurling another
stained napkin filled with seeds &
old roots, preserved from translation, unscathed
by the makeshift shovels &
collected rainwater. Unbaptized
by this garden, I follow
her voice, an instruction manual of
nourishments, lullabies to an unborn child.
奶奶 asks me if I still recognize my Chinese name
& I smother it with a murmur, my lips barely
touching. She takes a piece from the broken trellis
& instructs me to write it.
I drag strokes of the first character into
the unyielding ground until
it turns into my English name. I see
no difference. Everything in this garden
refuses to be ruined, the language of excavating
recipes & artifacts already chewed &
spit out. She writes in fragments
of chronology, because she used to be able to
draw uniform lines before
dust piled over countless surfaces & the yard
became the size of her village, before cement
poured over the grass, before snow shielded
old mittens in storage, before the yarn began stubbornly
clinging to the snowflakes. Even when
the clock runs out of battery &
their hands become houses only twice a day,
her palms will still smell of yesterday’s garden
—the coarse dirt
& untuned erhu from next door
only uprooted.