a dead baby shark swims
in my mouth, searching
for his mother amongst strands
of egg white and sea cucumber
submerged in a hundred dollar soup.
Umma says swallow,
so i swallow him whole;
baby shark-turned-into-collagen-
into-korean-glass-skin-into-good-girl-compliments-
into-bite-sized-pieces-wedged-between-molars,
squelching down my stomach
just in time to meet his mother;
the taste of death so luxurious
i say give me more
and grab my brother’s porcelain
bowl, extra salty
from the tears
that have fallen
into
it.

—

let me tell you the story of Daojin,
my buddhist grandma beckons
me onto her leather couch:
in the northern liang dynasty,

when famine hollowed the earth,
a monk by the name of Daojin fed
the famished by slicing and salting
his own flesh in a remote cave
where the hungry had gathered.
i give myself as food for all of you, he declared,
scraping the meat off his thighs nice
and clean. the ruler, moved
by Daojin’s charity, cremated
him north of the city walls,
smokes and flames crackling
for seven days into the beautiful
mourning sky.
when the fire died,
his tongue remained unburned.
grandma’s eyes fill with pride.

—

i gasp for O2 as he gasps for H2O,
his intestines bursting open beneath my right heel
like a destructed piñata, splattering
half-digested breakfast
onto the living
room floor.
tail flip-flopping,
scales shattering into shards
of glass, nemo, my beloved pet
goldfish, has just turned 2D
under my squirming foot,
blood vessels branching
out of milky eyes
staining me crimson

poor nemo, what world did you want
to see when you plunged
out of your bowl,
teaching me, at age five, how to crush
a life with the gentle push
and slide of a heel.
mom flushes nemo’s leftovers
down the toilet with a whirling
scream, his diluted gaze seeping
into the stained fabric of my skin,
watching from within.

—

there is something about a cemetery
that makes me feel at home
like how my first school field trip
was an excursion to the Chinese Christian cemetery,
a five minute walk from our classroom.
with pencil and clipboard in hand,
we were tasked to find the grave of someone
who shared the same birthday as us,
write their name down
and calculate the length of their lives:
an interdisciplinary, morbid
approach to mathematics.
i wanted to find my twin so bad
i raced up and down the studded hill
sweat crawling down my ass crack.

thirty minutes in, i stumbled upon
Chan Mei Ling, welcoming me
to her grave. i sat by Ms. Chan’s side
and subtracted 1926 from 1997.
71 years old. that’s enough living, i thought
to myself. i polished
Ms. Chan’s tombstone
with babywipes my mother
had packed me, nice and
pretty under the sun.
so serendipitous,
meeting you 77 years apart.