chinese new year’s eve always sounded like television static and boiling water.
i cradled dough in the palm of my hand as i half-watched my mother’s deft fingers and
half-parsed the variety show jokes sending the onscreen audience into fits.
it did not matter that my dumplings came out lumpy and wilted each time,
like sacks of rice at the market; it did not matter that they fell apart in the pot,
or that i would have to reunite their skins with the filling in my mouth;
it did not matter, because sometimes my parents would laugh together,
and I would smile even though i couldn’t understand the comedians’ chinese.
joy was alive and smelled of flour. it was bubbling on the stove. it steeped the air,
lucky and golden, like the chunks of ginger that my father slipped into some dumplings.
we’re glad you’re here with us tonight! the program hosts exclaimed, and it felt true—
even the crimps my clumsy fingers made had no other place to be
except there and then, just how they were under the lamplight.
i do not miss home, unless this is what home is:
a beautiful memory; half-true, half-parsed.
maybe someday i’ll miss even the moment i sit in now, shuddering and grieving,
all my flaws awash under cheap yellow fairy lights.
i have spent six years in temporary walls, fresh ones each fall,
and i wonder if i can call anything home if it does not bruise me,
if i emerge still breathing, with something warm tucked away somewhere—
in my back pocket, or cupped in my windchilled hands;
against the roof of my mouth, or sealed into the loving fold
of a dumpling peel. just enough hope for next year, and then the next,
so that my heart still kicks into a frantic beat
when the cars cut too close to my body. so that i still imagine burrowing into soft sweaters
and the bony crook of my mother’s arms, where i never have to grow.
as i mull over the taste of ginger and exhaust i think, i’m glad i’m here tonight.
one of these years, it will feel true again.