Umbilical

Watching JoJo and Gran Gran on TV, you—
your own person on a pink sofa—
you don’t need me

so much now. But wait, was it
prehistoric time or
just hours ago—

between your feeds—that I asked myself
how much longer am I needed?
When a trip to the pharmacy next door

to get Calpol would take an hour.
What about all these things you
couldn’t do, couldn’t reach:

drinking from a real cup, aiming your
spoonful of puree in the right direction,
the challenge of your shoelaces.

How I stand with others in a playgroup
hullabaloo: survived from coffee
to stronger coffee, taking for granted

the pots-banging, sporadic meltdowns,
toy sirens, minor injuries, as if we were all
on a film set making the best tragic-comedy.

Those days when everything happened
but too early, when we felt slightly dented,
sometimes non-human, often jubilant.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Jennifer Wong is the author of several collections including her latest collection, 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020) which has been named the PBS Wild Card Choice. She studied in Oxford and completed a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. Her poems, reviews and translations have appeared in World Literature Today, Oxford Poetry, Oxford Review of Books, The Rialto, Magma Poetry, Poetry Review, Poetry London, PN Review, Asian Cha and Asian Review of Books. She is writer-in-residence at Wasafiri and teaches creative writing at Poetry School and Oxford Brookes.