i.

I don’t remember the way you did it –

the cleaver pressed sharp against the meat,

a memory: fingernails sunk into flesh.

Dinnertime is a theatre of trauma,

a curtain revealing smells: garlic, ginger, fish sauce,

the lascivious tongue of oil touching a pan

as the radio spits out a language

I keep tucked in my school skirt

& I don’t remember the way you did it,

I only remember how each spoonful

tasted like a bruise.




ii.

You pick apart the blue on my collarbone

& do not speak. I am only just realising

that shame has a shape—a blurry-edged,

clingy foetus you cradle, so tenderly,

your thumbs pressed against my womb

as if to say that violence is in our genes

& still, you do not speak—

(I read somewhere that

Chinese women make their anger

into something they can drink.)

A soup stirred for three weeks

drenches the house in its dull,

star-anise smell for decades,

a cheap spice, $2 a bag & you,

my dear, dumb, silent mother

coax my mouth open,

tell me a story

feed me a tonic

to burn my insides

clean.




iii.

Mama, when I write poems

I am always typing words in hiding

with the crack of that radio still nestled

in between my collarbones

& thinking about how pretty English is,

how this half-cocked verse tastes like

a recipe missing an ingredient

you cannot get from around here,

but Mama—

I think I get it now. I think I get it.

That yellow is not a synonym for blonde

& my father shuts the door

to cry without anyone seeing

& if you were still here

I would ask you

how you made that soup for me

your fingers strong

against the barrel of my chest,

spoon after spoon

as your tears dripped down

into my forgetting mouth