Today's poem is by Weijia Pan

Ultimatum
       

If I forget one character a day
I will have forgotten Chinese
by the end of 2042.

Sooner or later I will forget
my quarrel with my father,

I will forget if
I ever wrote to you.

And the new language
I will have acquired

will not be the same
as the one that bit me.

Copyright © 2024 Weijia Pan All rights reserved
from Motherlands
Milkweed Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission