Ghrelin

MARK LIANG

There is famine and there is drought.

I am the prayer of my parents, who threw their bodies overseas in laundry baskets and empty vases. So too then did I throw myself to the holy Mecca of brick and mortar; That I might also breathe the same dream that they did. Cardigans knitted on warm stomachs, they told me.

I am a ruminant of Golden Mountain and an echo of 1989.

My ancestors travel from East to West and I continue the journey from West to East but Coast to Coast to set root in the dream that they planted for me.

But here it is too sterile here.

Here I miss dim sum. I miss the warmth of incense and the heat of a crowded dense room. I miss the language of butcher blocks and the flavor of chicken so pure you can see it rising like steam.

All they have here is Campbell’s cream.

For the first time I see a sea of faces unlike mine, and I recall the anthem-promise of my grandmother in her wicker chair.

To be a foreigner is to suffer.