My grandmother holds the cat in arms like a yao lan made of silk congee, spindle for prom dress 

She understands the desperation to belong in the cats meows, but only

Hears bleeping Mars rovers when I talk to her above Sydney’s garbled din

I read her tomato plant reviews as ‘fidelity of lemon rabbits’ through amateurish translators (qualifications : did spelling exercises) 

Thus make a list of all her other headwords in cipher:

Money allows the ghost to polish

Blow your horn under the bed

God catches on fire

Eat rice from a slipper plate 

Meanwhile, the origami owl at the window decides to fly to some other place where chit chat doesn’t have to be evaluated over and over with definition 

I search for its steam ship in a Concorde plane, land back at the place the visas were stamped and rival siblings rode off into foreign universities alone

Speech bubbles bob out of reach from our teeth. Look the word up in my school notebook: Once twice and then forget already.