We were still children when we learned about boys and girls. She told me that
she found out how babies are made. Mommy’s and Daddy’s kissed, which is why
boys are so yucky. “Boys aren’t yucky!” I told her.
“Of course you would say that,” she replied, “you're a boy but you aren’t a yuck-
ie boy. You can't get me pregnant.”
“Yes I can! I'm a boy.”
Then she looked at me and said, “Mmm maybe, but you don't have boy parts?”
That was one of the first times I felt true absence, an absence that never really
left.
At times I feel absence when I look in the mirror.
I never saw a Chinese face until I looked at my own.
When I realized that, I started to seek out my mother tongue
The words fall into me like water flows into a stream; only, when I open my
mouth to give them physicality, I feel their absence. A
s if there’s love that I have never been able to touch. Like the ghost of a mother
holding her son. Or maybe the linger of a grasp that I was pulled away from.
I have felt as though it’s been hard for people to see me in color.
In this space where nothing is supposed to exist, I am there.
Not because I want to be, but because I have always been. And I know nothing
else. I may think to myself, should I try and change this void’s definition? Not
because I want to, but because I have to? Am I allowed to try to make more space
for myself? Not because I have always been strong enough, but because I’ve
always had to be.
How did I go from being a little boy to someone who must ask for permission to
exist? Who am I asking?
Comments