I am walking into the warm Tim Horton’s. I slip the grey gloves and my scarf over my head. The thought “I should get a haircut” has passed back and forth in my mind, every moment I take off my scarf. I’ve always had short hair and when it gets slightly long, I get bothered.
My mother’s yell echoes against my bedroom door.
You can smell my father’s soot stench
He is home that morning after a long night at the fire station
We take the stairs step-by-step down the building staircase.
He holds my hand, drags me up the slope to the bus stop.
6:30am every morning.
Good morning, how may I help you? The drive-thru speakers speak to her, my mom. It is a cold winter day, warmth evaporated onto the windows of the car, and winter winds blowing through her glass. She absolutely hates when January and February come, she longs for the groundhog that pops out of his hole, marking a closer arrival of Spring. She drives with her office heels and she wears her …
A rotten banana peel is lying on the concrete.
I’m thinking,
How do cartoons slip by stepping on a banana peel?
We approach closer.
My childish guts are challenging me.
I step onto the banana peel.
Father grips my hands tight to not let me fall.
You saw the banana peel and yet you still stepped on it
He says to me.
It’s always nice to come to stop by Tim Horton’s to have a chat up with my friend. I probably stop by twice a day. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. My main destinations, office and home. The employees at Tim Horton’s are no doubt the closest people I have to friends.
It has a magical power,
It defines your personality, future and fortune,
Even before you’re born.
Everyone has a different one
Depending on,
Parents’ hopes and wishes.
It was a treat,
To not get yelled at.
Father brings us to the zoo every weekend,
In Mei Foo.
He knew someone,
So we always got in for free.
Sometimes when things don’t go my way,
A volcano explodes, internally.
The lava splurts everywhere
And causes the adrenaline rush to my head.
A headache.
I find ways to tame the eruption
Sleep is usually my escape
Today, I’m wide awake.
The wind pushing the leaves in the trees,
The cars driving on my right.
The cars passing around the road and her voice recites.
Going home with the money gone
And no food
–Empty-handed
I sat outside the door,
Hoping to not go home,
Mother would not forgive me,
For making a mistake.
The neighbour comes and asks me “what’s wrong”
I told her what happened
And she accompanied me home.
Recite not poems when you’re holding onto mother’s cash,
I gather my guts and face the witch in my mother.
A doctor or a teacher,
A lawyer or a writer?
Chinese prospects,
Wealth, Health and Happiness,
Aiming for a higher level of the hierarchy, of course.
I hated my name in school,
I was punished,
For the number of strokes.
Calligraphy was a hobby of hers
Week after week, fault after fault,
Each stroke was delicately brushed,
Each stroke was carefully moved.
Weekends were a bliss. It was when I would visit grandfather.
Grandfather would always share my favourite treat, A chicken leg.
He was always willing to share,
His grandpa love
Through the oil and grease of that chicken’s leg,
Just the way I loved it.
An identity.
We’re dumpling experts,
Noodle-obsessors.
Proud of our eating culture,
We always celebrate it together,
By making it from the flour,
To garlic in the vinegar.
Men, tall and lean
Women,
No particular physique definition,
But, white smooth skin.
周
Mother would always give me the duty
Of asking grandpa for money.
I hated that duty because
Grandfather made hard money.
He woke up early
And centered in the middle,
Waiting for strollers to pass by,
And their shoes shone
Day and night.
Grandpa would give us the money
And something special about him
Was that he would ask me to store it in socks,
So I wouldn’t lose his daily duties.
But mother would always insist
To drain his money for us.
I had a dream, a dream when my father went back.
Grandfather was rocking on my rocking chair,
Back and forth, back and forth.
He was against the sunlight, so all I could see was his silhouette. His arms were folded bearing you as precious. He was trying to tell me something, I just couldn’t hear him.
As he was getting up,
He held his knee.
As he got up,
That was his bad knee.
He came over to tell me,
Mei Hing, your daughter is crying
That was the moment,
I was awoken by your crying voice.
Grandfather was telling me that you needed me.
And the volcano inside becomes dormant again.
When LPG was still used in households back then, I spent my time after school facing the two gas tanks in the kitchen. It was the only way to remember my dictation words. I shut the door and pushed the words out of my throat, hitting them against the tanks and into my head.
Built of the etymology of,
A goat above a person,
It means,
Beauty.
Not only how people look on the outside,
Nor how their makeup makes them look,
Nor how their attire fits the fashion trend.
True beauty is the inner beauty.
It was once about
How slim I looked,
How many men I attracted,
Or how many friends I had.
Today,
I tell her,
My daughter,
That the most important beauty of all
Is love.
美
Home was protection and security. The outside world was uncertain, I was always feeling at threat. I didn’t dare to go anywhere else after school, not that I ever wanted to. As I stepped into the apartment, my cousins were sitting at the dining table, with textbooks opened. My brother was standing at the corner, being punished by mother. It was always a full house.
I slammed the kitchen door.
\
Like the one and only fracture in my life.
I was up for batting. She pitched it to me as just as I was about to hit a home run. The bat completely missed and targeted my forearm instead. The pain of the hit, shocked my whole arm, I headed to the nurse’s office for ice. It continued to hurt throughout the day, but I thought it would go away. Afterschool, as I reached home I told mother what had happened and headed off to the ER.
Fault after fault, she was finally able to perfect the art.
Each stroke delicately brushed, each stroke carefully moved.
A piece of work and a gust of spring.
Mother took care of 3-5 children daily. Her attention was barely focused on me. She only communicated with her frustration and anger. There were no rooms, no privacy. 3 bunk beds drew the letter ‘L’ in a corner and the dining table was on the other side of the flat.
I look at my watch, it’s a few minutes before 8am. The office is always empty at this time, but it’s that moment in time which I embrace. No disturbances, no interruptions, just silence.
The kitchen was my private place to be. Mother placed me there because my recitals were always disturbing. I sat on the floor, placing the textbooks around me. I spent hours reciting Chinese poems and English passages, with an inborn Cantonese accent. It was a private performance in the kitchen every evening, with an audience who listened in silence.
The shipping containers piled on my desk,
Pink for Air
Blue for Overseas.
Duties which needed filing today.
These piles gave others anxiety
But to me,
It was freeing.
Her daughter sat in front of her. At the desk, where she spent most of her time. She wondered what made her stay, what made her not come home late at night? She was a workaholic, but she never admitted it.
The fragrance of a flower,
The scent of perfume,
Hing,
The refreshing intake into the body.
Life is the perfect compilation of bittersweet.
It’s the sugar to the coffee,
The honey to the
Fragrance acts as the metaphor.
The strokes of the character
Wrap each individual with warmth and love.
Gained through motherhood,
Learned by being a mother,
Refocused everything on my daughter.
馨
When I can’t sleep,
I’d drive on the street with no destination to be found.
Red light after red light, intersection after intersection. The anguish which I felt soon ripples off.
