“How are you?” my great-aunt asks, pouring tea from a big clay pot.
She looks at me with curiosity; a wall of dim sum steamers between us.
I want to tell her about the woman who broke my heart.
But I know “How are you?’’ means
“Tell me how you are in the least controversial way.”
Her chopsticks clink against her bowl, and I am reminded of how easily it could
shatter. My dad once told me not to be a bull in a china shop.
“Go delicately; watch where you step.”
A bull, a mantis, and a gay girl walk into an Asian restaurant
The Western part of me is screaming. I want to tear
through the table—turn it upside down with my
horns.
This is the part of me that wants chaos and blood.
The part I keep hidden.
My great-aunt pours us more tea, and I notice the watercolor stems on the pot—
how they’re as thin and papery as her veins.
If the bull is let loose, it would tear right through her.
Go delicately; watch where you step.
“How are you?” she asks. I rein in the bull, pat its grizzly head. Leaning into its
neck, I whisper, not every place is your battleground.
Here, I must move softly; an Asian mantis gliding through a china store.
“I’ve been stressed,” I say, without going into detail.
This is my way of being authentic while causing the
least pain.
The bull squirms in its seat. I picture it charging
across the restaurant—shards of glass in my lap,
bloodstains on the tablecloth.
In a rush of panic, I check on my aunt.
The bull sits quietly in a corner, breathing down her neck.
Not every place is your battleground…
And so, we lay our pieces across the table like carefully chosen mahjong tiles.
The bull smirks.
“This is the only way to make it work,” says Mantis, taking a bite of stir-
fried cabbage.
“Can you truly connect without showing your full self?” asks the bull.
I don’t know.
But I’ve been doing it my whole life.
The well of generational trauma
My parents drank from the well.
There was no baptism
or ceremony. Where I lived,
the poison was in the water.
I held my breath
as they dunked my head in,
told me to drink,
told me it would be good for me.
Our bloodline is tainted
because well-meaning elders
with loud voices and sharp hands,
never questioned
what they should have.
Grandma worries
about asbestos under the plaster,
when the poison is in our veins.
Little Me
never felt seen…
So, I get attached to
people who hurt me.
My lover has eyes the color
of mom’s conditional love;
a face like dad’s
disapproval.
Their chest echoes
like the hallway of my
childhood home.
I thought I escape that place.
I thought I was done healing.
But you speak, and I hear:
‘’Welcome back.
We missed you.
Please stay.’’
I guess I’m trying to recreate
my childhood, so I can have
a different ending.
My trauma shapeshifts
into a tall figure,
heavy eyeliner,
dressed in black.
They are larger than life.
An accumulation of all the
unloved parts of me.
They kiss me on
the forehead, and say,
‘’you are home.’’
Yes, I draw everything too.
Everything I create starts off as a raw emotion.
