art + poetry
BODILY CONFINEMENT
“What does it mean to be a ‘Chinese’ outside of China?” — Judith Misrahi-Barak, 2012
“It is always the body that I return to—our bodies and their various meanings.”
— Kei Miller, Things I Have Withheld, 2021
I am confined to this body
that screams I’m from elsewhere
but I’ve known nowhere else
This is how it betrays me:
My straight hair invites
people to pull it out of curiosity
tell me it’s so pretty
attempt to speak a language of cutlery
Teased about my slant eyes
I do what I can
to distance myself from ancestral lands
denying they have any role in who I am
My yellow hue is distinct
I never blend in
never feel comfortable in my own skin
Instead I learn to hate this body
Bursting with hope
I move to a foreign country
where people are more confused about me
unsure of which box to place me in
This hackneyed script
each conversation a strain
I tire of explaining again and again
why I claim Jamaica as my origin
My dissonant body
is all people see
but when they get to know me
they realize I am more than just my body
Confined to this body
I will love it for what it is
Make this body a home
because it’s all I’ve ever known
HOMECOMING
for my Popo (“grandmother” in Hakka Chinese)
You’ve been away for a while now
your absence is palpable
but this seaside town must go on without you
The giant poinciana tree over your home
wonders why you no longer tread on the flowers
she generously bestows each morning
Donkey eye seeds lining the shores of Kokomo
reminisce on greeting their daily patron
asking why she stopped visiting
Cabarita Island peers into your verandah
eagerly awaiting your return
but the outside light stays off
Like them, I have a naïve hope
this seaside town will see you again
For now, you reside in this hospital bed
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND
“loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984
If ideas are the foundation of empires
then I subject you to my empire
state
of
mind
I construct an idea of you
an ignorant reverie
I call the empire of us
Combatting suburban boredom
I cling to my little kingdom
for the banality of my reality
is too much to bear
I come to my senses
burn our castle to the ground
yet the foundation
remains
SCATTERED FAMILIES
I didn’t realise when I told my family goodbye
and got on that flight
it was the end of an era
Saying goodbye not just to my family
but their universe I had been immersed in
from the beginnings of my existence
Now I was free to be
whoever I wanted to be
To create a life for myself
informed by my family of origin
but independent of it
I swapped car rides with them for commutes to work
family dinners for solitary takeout
and nightly patio chats with weekly catch-up calls
The privilege of self-actualisation
is as freeing as it is terrifying
and sometimes I can’t help but think:
my family was not meant to live scattered
Days apart quickly turn into years
stretches of time punctuated by too short visits
miles between us tenuously connected by...
Poor connection. Reconnecting.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
spotty Whatsapp calls
our lives filtered through what we choose to share
and limited understandings of each other’s contexts
I send pictures on our group chat
to give them some semblance of my life
and the people they’ll likely never meet
Meanwhile, my only pictures with them
are from special occasions, mostly graduations
While I slowly grieve the end of past eras
it makes space to embrace the new
The scarcity of our times together
makes those moments all the sweeter
Because for all those years immersed
I didn’t know the difference
