The year I turned fourteen,
Father took me out of school.
I scrubbed the floors,
washed the clothes.
At night, by candlelight,
I snuck in my brother’s books,
dreaming of a faraway land
where I could read and write.
*
Here the fog obscures
the full moon and the stars.
The sea spins a song
of solitude and pain.
I wait for my turn to enter
the land of the free.
At night, by candlelight,
I write in a notebook I hide.
*
On the walls I see poems,
brushed in ink, carved on wood,
laments of lost women
stumbling in the world.
I read their stories
and weep.
*
Each time
I pick up the knife,
ready to etch my words
into the wood,
my hands tremble
and I step back.
*
At night I lie awake.
Will I always be a secret?

Teow Lim Goh is the author of Islanders (Conundrum Press, 2016), a volume of poems on the history of Chinese exclusion at the Angel Island Immigration Station. Her work has been featured in Tin House, Catapult, PBS NewsHour, Colorado Public Radio, and The New Yorker. She lives in Denver.