Poem Analysis 6: The Youngest Daughter

The Youngest Daughter

BY CATHY SONG

The sky has been dark

for many years.

My skin has become as damp

and pale as rice paper

and feels the way

mother’s used to before the drying sun   

parched it out there in the fields.

      Lately, when I touch my eyelids,

my hands react as if

I had just touched something

hot enough to burn.

My skin, aspirin colored,   

tingles with migraine. Mother

has been massaging the left side of my face   

especially in the evenings   

when the pain flares up.

This morning

her breathing was graveled,

her voice gruff with affection   

when I wheeled her into the bath.   

She was in a good humor,

making jokes about her great breasts,   

floating in the milky water

like two walruses,

flaccid and whiskered around the nipples.   

I scrubbed them with a sour taste   

in my mouth, thinking:

six children and an old man

have sucked from these brown nipples.

I was almost tender

when I came to the blue bruises

that freckle her body,

places where she has been injecting insulin   

for thirty years. I soaped her slowly,

she sighed deeply, her eyes closed.

It seems it has always

been like this: the two of us

in this sunless room,

the splashing of the bathwater.

In the afternoons

when she has rested,

she prepares our ritual of tea and rice,   

garnished with a shred of gingered fish,

a slice of pickled turnip,

a token for my white body.   

We eat in the familiar silence.

She knows I am not to be trusted,   

even now planning my escape.   

As I toast to her health

with the tea she has poured,

a thousand cranes curtain the window,

fly up in a sudden breeze.

One of a few poems that I honestly enjoyed reading. More so, I was able to fully understand every line of the narrator's emotions. Starting off with the title, "The Youngest Daughter", right away, I was very aware of the narration in this poem. I found it super interesting and heartening while reading through this first person narration. The Youngest Daughter expressed her feelings towards her family. Specifically, she focused on her mother and the struggles that both go through daily. She starts off with the aging of her mother as she describes her skin with her mother's skin condition. Though the daughter is caring for her mother, it almost seems like she resents her in a way because of the way she describes her mother's past.

I found it ironic that the youngest daughter, out of all daughters or siblings, is caring for the mother. It's also ironic that the mother isn't capable of caring for her youngest daughter. Instead, the daughter must nurse her mother back to health. Going back and forth between perspectives of both the mother and daughter's life, the daughter describes how both have similar problems and conclusions. Even though she helps her mother back to health, her mother provides much for her; as they do almost everything together. As I read the poem for a second time, I believe that the narrator really loves the bond she has with her mother despite both of their problems and struggles. The last line of the poem depicts the hope that the narrator has. Her hope is very inspiring!