Lishui

My grandma hid underwear deep in the cabinet again.
When we finally found it, it stank of aged pee.
In her childhood Lishui dialect I barely understand, she mumbles:
“My mom will wash it and give me a bath.”

“How old are you?” I test.
“I’m sixty-seven.” She smiles with a broken front tooth (she’ll be ninety-two in twelve days).
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s in Lishui, China.”

Lishui, winter of 1968: great-grandmother submerged
her hands into a gin-clear creek
to wash clothes for her grandson—
she died next morning.

7576 miles from Garfield, New Jersey
—Lishui means beautiful water.