“Retirement” by Monica Sok

Retirement 

Monica Sok 

When he becomes a monk, he says I will no longer be his daughter. 
To one another, we would be people. Strangers. 

But what if I have children? They will not be your grandchildren? 

He pauses, considering, then grips the wheel and keeps driving. 

I don’t visit him enough and when I do, I never cook for him. 

Imagine his monkhood. I would have to give him more respect 

as a stranger. His head shaved every three weeks. 

No one is allowed to touch a monk’s head. But I am the only one 

who massages my father’s temples before he goes to bed. 

If I am no longer his daughter, what will I offer him then?

about this poem

“We all have private languages to provoke our loved ones. Once, my father made the hollow threat of estrangement with the possibility of pursuing a monastic life during his retirement. For thirty years, he had worked as a welder making parts for agricultural machinery. While adjusting to this significant life change, he was being hard on me for not being a more traditional daughter. In the silence that followed, we both feared the loss of intimacy with one another. Years later, my father is happily retired, and I am still his daughter.” 

—Monica Sok

Monica Sok is a Khmer poet and the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). A 2018–20 Wallace Stegner Fellow, she is the recipient of a 2018 Discovery Poetry Prize as well as support from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other organizations. She lives in Oakland.