Chinatown East

Keep holding me like this
and help me untie my birth language
my first language
steeped in bruises, knotted up in a child’s still body
petrified with fear
words thrown at me
alcoholic bodies raging into me
embedded like ceramic shards
all around my little heart
me, so small and already convinced
my home felt like captivity . . .

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 4. Purchase the book to read the full piece.