This week, Charissa Cheuk brings us a poem that understands the transience of the TCK experience. Beginning with images of childhood that matures into an indifferent voice, Cheuk takes us on a journey that many TCKs will find familiar– a journey riddled with empty losses and exhausting helplessness.
Before we speak, let us travel back in time,
to stuff our spirit within a limp little doll:
sweet, round eyes peering out a window,
scampering across the lawn feathered with autumn leaves.
Well, a great black hole eats at the mind,
and away we fly in the belly of a bird.
Like a nestling pushed out of its bed, an early bird,
we fall prey to branches and wind. There is little time
to learn. Wolves crouch below with a snack in mind
as barking canines in the sky play fetch with a rag doll.
They chase us, and we tire of being dressed in leaves.
Then comes a glow of gold through the hole – a window.
The view grows blurry outside the window
from up high; the notes die in the throat of the bird.
We’ve yet to understand the feeling when our world leaves,
when the heavens scream down at us that time
is up. We are content, for now, to pack up each doll
and carry on. We don’t mind.
Nowhere, an institution feeds the unguiculate mind
staring out through its grease-painted window.
‘Come play with us!’ beckons the smiling doll,
and so, like animals we frolic: they are fish, and we, a bird.
Such simple faith we have that ties should last through time.
‘Tend the house while we are gone. Remember to sweep the leaves!’
This is when the wolf snaps its teeth and leaves
a bloody cesspool – shreds of soul and loss of mind.
However brief our stay, this time
the differences between us tint the window
almost black, a disease we spread by bird
to the friends who drop us like a doll
into the gutter – a used, uncherished doll.
To the rhythms of a stone drum, ink spills across leaves
until it runs dry: one stone for each bird.
We sculpt our keep; the years do not mind.
But, like vines, more of them climb through the window.
Dare we hope? Dare they stand the test of time?
We'll craft a doll by which to remember them. Never mind
about sweeping leaves, mopping floors, scrubbing the window.
We are but a bird, and we dare not fight the hands of time.
Charissa Cheuk is an MK who grew up in a creative access country in Asia, intermittently moving back to Canada every few years. She is now studying neuroscience at the University of Toronto.
