Ideas to Inspire

It is 1981 in Kula,

and my father, cloudy and high on booze

and pakalōlō, for all his love songs

of rain and mountain mist, is unable

to stay. My mother, unable to leave

him, showers during his frantic search

through her purse for money, clattering loose

change against house keys, for any green bill

with a face. As an afterthought, he turns,

concerned now with my witness, young eyes. Hunched

over the kitchen table, I scribble

nonsense. He bribes, “I’ll give you a dollar

if you don’t tell.” I won’t. But I pretend

not to hear him, going on with the scratch,

scrawling the illegible string of loops

I insist is real writing. He doesn’t

bother to yell. He has no time for it,

knows he must leave before the sound of warm

water, unsteady thumps against the tub

and her skin, stops.

                      I knew there were stories

there, staring down at the coil of e’s

I had just written — a bouncy ocean,

a black curly hair — that this was the start

of important work. At the paper’s top,

there was my name, full, each letter composed

of dots for me to connect for homework.

My finger shadowed each sharp corner, whooshed

over straight lines and curves, almost-circles

and space–slow and careful gestures before

the pencil’s touch. Then, holding the bitten

roll of yellow wood and lead, I pressed down

hard to make a mark. Sighing with each glide,

I worked, writing through the door’s dull thud

behind him when he left, right through the wash

of swallowed tears behind the bathroom walls.

There was only this thrilled, measured motion:

my young hand threading dots into letters,

the fullness of my name, its shape, shouting.

–Brandy Nālani McDougall, The Salt-Wind Ka Makani Paʻakai