“Have you considered law school?” My heartbeat quickens and I experience a pervasive concoction of panic and hope. 

“Don’t listen to Wai Gong,” Mom hisses as if I have any ability to block out his grand proclamation of my future. It is now hour 4 of marinating in the 103-degree heat with Wai Po (my grandmother) and Wai Gong (my grandfather), and I am—quite literally—melting down. 
​
“Do you want banana bread?” Wai Po asks rhetorically as she places a fat slice in front of me. Ah yes, the sugary, fibrous antithesis to the dread laying its roots in my gut. In this family, we drown said roots with chocolate and walnuts. “Need ... AC,” I whimper. ​

 To my stepmother,

I love your yellow hair. Your smooth strands drenched in the seething sunlight. The big curls bouncing against your cheek, like leaves leaning against a luscious flower. When we flew across the globe to you, my father dyed his hair. Three days of bleach left his fingertips white like a corpse in water. Washing. Washing. Washing. Until the black was all squeezed from his coarse strands—slipping through his fingers in patches. When he came out of the bathroom, his roots were dead. But he grinned like a new man. 
​A start. He said with his flaming scalp.​

Sour sunlight filters through dingy panels
Stinging Cosette’s milk filled skin
My skin is fine on the front, but behind the curtain’s web,
Reveals crawling whales, repeat of tales, my tear soaked pillow
November was a hard month​