Memory keeps people alive. That’s what you told me, in the living room after dark, your face drowned in shadow. As long as we remember, then she will always be with us. You were looking away, but your arm had wrapped itself around my shoulders. Your fingers pressed into my skin, as if trying to hold me together. As if trying to make me remember. 

But Ma, what if all I do is remember? Even then, I could feel the ghosts watching us, lingering in the lamplight. Waiting—for what, I still don’t know. 

Ma, you told me that memory keeps the dead alive, but what about the living?  

/ 

Nine years ago, Beijing. Wai Po’s apartment. Chinese opera crooning from the TV and cat hair stuck to the couch. A family of three making dou sha baos at the dining room table. 

We each had our roles to play. I was in charge of sectioning the dough into little squares, and you folded the red bean filling into the center. Wai Po supervised, pacing back and forth around the table, humming along to the TV. Every so often, she leaned in to peer over your shoulder, pointing at some near-invisible flaw in the shape of your bao. Ai-ya, she chided, here, you missed a spot. You brushed her off each time, clicking your tongue, but a smile danced on your mouth anyway. While you were distracted, I helped myself to fingerfuls of red bean filling—a sweet, creamy paste that softened on my tongue, stuck to my teeth. 

I prefer to remember us this way. Protected from the future, shrouded in warmth, three squares cut from the same dough. 

/ 

Autumn. Somewhere up in the glacial north, a colony of over 2,500 Arctic terns squabble and chirp in rowdy chatter. Then in one collective instant, they all fall silent. 

Every year, between September and November, colonies of Arctic terns leave the Arctic Circle to migrate to the Antarctic. These tiny, inconspicuous birds hold the record for the world's longest migration, flying approximately 55,000 miles across the globe annually.  

Yet, just seconds before the Arctic terns begin their ambitious journey, they quiet to an eerie hush. Like an intake or holding of breath. Scientists have found no true explanation for this phenomenon, but they gave it a name anyway: dread.  

For a heartbeat, the colony exists in dread.  

Then they erupt into the air, leaving their nests behind. 

/ 

The first time I moved to another country, I was holding your hand.  
We must stick together, you said. Otherwise we will be lost. Together, we stay strong.  

Even then, I knew what you were telling me. I knew that despite its flaws,  
Beijing had been a forgiving home, sheltered by family and habit—but the next city would not be nearly as kind. A stranger, with whom we shared no history, nor blood.  

Strong. Ma, I knew what you meant. But now, I know what you were also saying
is that we had to be more like Wai Po. 

Born from reform and raised on resistance, my Wai Po carried an ego the size of a tank but a heart to match it. At sixty-five, she could still infiltrate rooms with her jasmine perfume and hearty cackle. Out of habit, she held a plank every morning. One minute on the dot. 

Seven years ago, January. The cozy dim sum restaurant around the corner from Wai Po’s apartment. You and I were spending a week in Beijing to visit Wai Po, as well as to celebrate Chun Jie. At some point in the conversation, in between helping ourselves to generous loads of steaming hot dumplings, you asked Wai Po why she didn’t move with us.  

Because Beijing was all she knew, Wai Po replied simply, as if stating the obvious. This, you must have frowned at, because Wai Po followed up with a conspiratorial whisper—besides, who will take care of my cats? Xiao Hong, you know those haughty brats wouldn’t last a day without me. She said this with a grunt and a wink, and I suppose that must have been enough to satisfy you. Us. 

It was the last winter we would spend all together.  

/ 

Although most Arctic terns return to their nesting grounds after breeding,
some end up veering off course. Arctic terns from Greenland have been
sighted in Australia, while terns hatched in Siberia have appeared in South Africa.  

In fact, the flight paths that Arctic terns take are rarely in straight lines. During their search for the perfect place to nest, they end up zigzagging across oceans and continents.  
Sometimes their nesting place ends up being exactly where they began from. Other times it is somewhere new entirely. 

What do we mean when we say lost? Maybe being lost is nothing but settling for a different nest. Maybe being lost is less about forgetting the way, more about losing a destination. 

/ 

The call came in around five a.m. on a March morning, across the continent
from the hospital two streets down from Wai Po’s apartment complex. 

Heart attack, they reported to you over the phone. She was making dinner. 

Somewhere in the world, a feather falls into the ocean. She was alone. 

/ 

Four years ago, our newish apartment. The cluttered living room.  
As you rearranged the sofa cushions for the fifth time, you finally burst out, I’m
no good at decorating. 

A pause. Me neither, was my reply then.  
But Ma, what I really wish I had said instead was that it’s
not your fault. 

It’s not your fault that the paintings were suddenly too bright and
the fan too loud. It’s not your fault that we tried shoving everything
in the cabinet, but the AC kept whirring anyway, a perpetual hum
that doused the house in sickening static. It’s not your fault that the
red charms you put up on the door wouldn’t stick and it’s not your
fault that I shut you out, bubble-wrapping my bedroom, calling it
fiction, calling it survival.   

Ma, it’s not your fault that we were lost.
It’s not your fault that your mother passed
2,537 miles away from you. 

/  

The second time I moved to another city, I was alone. 
College scooped me off the ground and dropped me into
California. I labored. I toiled. I shot arrows at the stars. I forgot to
text and my calls lasted as long as it took for you to treat me too
much like myself. Are you eating, Xi Xi? Sleeping? Learning?
New shadows plagued your voice. I could hear them, Ma, but I
didn’t know how to clear them. I didn’t know how to give you
an answer when all I had were questions of my own. 

/  

With a migratory route that takes around five months to complete, it’s only fair to ask—why do Arctic terns migrate so far? Why travel from one pole to the other? 

Despite the long and harsh conditions of their migration, the Arctic tern boasts the title of seeing the most daylight each year, more than any other animal on Earth. They track the light reflected on the ground and ocean surfaces, following it across hemispheres. 
After all, like most animals, the terns understand sunlight as a sign of food, shelter, existence. 

In other words, Arctic terns migrate
to follow the sun.

/ 

So, I guess this is all to say, no, Ma. No, I still don’t know
which country to call home, or what name to call it with. 
Each night I lean against my ghosts and I write them into my poetry, asking them to leave but wishing they would be there in the morning all the same. I am learning to live with them, which is to say I am learning to live. I am a never-ending ellipsis, a one-way flight, a colony on the verge of escaping dread.  

Today, my bedroom. Sunset. I am counting on my fingers, two, three, four, five
springs that have slipped past since March. 
Wai Po is the mirage condensing on my window, the song playing from my laptop, the
streetlamps quivering alight outside. 

So, I guess this is all to say, so what? So what if the day has ended?
So what if the day is ending? So what if the day will continue to end
and I am beginning again anyway, trying to chase the sun? 

So, this is all to say, it’s late, Ma. 
Call me back in the morning.