June in Nanjing

Juliana Pan

Rain. Screaming rain, blood-warm rain dancing
against the tin roof. Rain, filling the buckets we empty

each morning for it to fill. In this life, we skirt
around the river that rises like a voice. Rain, until

the roof leaks through the kitchen light. Rain, as I pick
shuimitao peaches with my mother for tofu, skins molting

in my soggy bare hands. Rain, as my father watched, waving
from the wicker porch swing to come back, to stay

inside. Rain, stammering through the tin mouths, open
to catch each droplet, each syllable. Rain, readying

the next row of white lilies, the last stubborn sprinkles
of pollen falling from the softening spines

in the kitchen. Rain each day, sloughing the soft skins
from the ripening shuimitaos, globes ready, sweet

as the nights we shared Happy Meals in the twinkling
dark. Sometimes I wonder, rain knotting our hair into one

shared fist, what it means to be my mother. To be her
daughter. Then, I think of those Happy Meal nights, the lilies

still sparkling with rain-glisten, the buckets
of roof-speak she pours into the upstairs bathtub, and then

I realize I already know what it means.

Juliana Pan is a poet, writer, and visual artist from Bellevue, Washington. She is a sophomore at Issaquah High School, WA. She has received the Foyle Young Poets Award from the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom and a Silver Medal for Poetry from the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and her recent work has appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Roanoke Review, The Minnesota Review, and Grist. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and loves her grandma’s cooking.