Working at my parent's restaurant on a monday evening

me on a stool and mom on a chair
the two of us tearing the ends off snowpeas
stripping away the stringy spine
as she'd tell me stories of growing up in Taipei-
of dad playing mah-jong and racking up debts
of the real reason why we moved to the states
of the hidden family history she wanted me to know
but history that I wasn't to repeat again.

I-Ching Lao lives in a basement room with her cat Kalli and a family of world-traveling puppets.