By Lavinia Liang
was not a true waterfall, but then again—
a bridge for cars, a white clapboard house, steep
gravel paths down to where the rocks formed
a tent in the creek, which the Greeks would call a
cataract—where once I caught the largest freshwater
fish anyone in my family had seen. Call it beginner’s
luck. Another time, after dinner, my father took us
to a different stretch of the stream and we unearthed
crawfish in the muddy banks, let the fading sun
lap at our shoes. I had not thought of that place
in a long time. Once, on the brown sand,
a dead raccoon, a faceless corpse—the first time
I saw maggots out in the wild, almost unrecognizable
save their hunger. In Grange Creek, our friend caught
a white water worm and placed it in a can while our
fathers fished for fish. What was it? We still don’t know,
some ghost of a leech, mouth opening and opening
at the lip of the tin—we dropped rock after rock on it
because, sometimes, without more,
hurt is the only nameable thing.
Did we let the worm go? Did they put the fish back?
I don’t remember. I remember sunset, which is probably
wrong. Probably false. Probably made up so I can write
about a place that was memory before I even left.
Do all places where one raises children feel like
Grange Falls—endless until it ends? Those familiar
cruelties performed by the underage, not so much
training as they are the things themselves?
Do all places sublimate so easily in the mind like the
glitch in the water, the rupture of those rocks, in that place
where once my father told us, Don’t let go until you know
for sure. Don’t let go until I’ve become an echo.
Lavinia Liang is a writer and attorney. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, TIME, the Los Angeles Review of Books, AGNI, and elsewhere.