sweet and sour | DESCENT Issue #4

ALISA LEYAO WU 伍乐瑶

visions of home are

red leather booths growing up,

wrists shaking

balancing heaping plates of food

slightly warped menus

ghosts of diners

fingertips still linger

two thousand miles away now

dreams of afternoons spent

watching grandpa

stir glossy red batches of sweet and sour sauce

the creation of ingredients he keeps tight lipped

was faded orange last time i really looked at it

they stopped selling the old food dye, he said

it doesn't look right to me anymore

too diluted, childhood dulled

twenty now, watching my siblings shoot up

to match me in height

a newfound resemblance in how

our eyeliner is alike

mother and father tell me not to worry too much

“nothing’s changed at all with us”

but their exhaustion is exponential when they

pick me up from john glenn international we

drive past my old stomping grounds en route

to the house

even suburbia, in its sleepiness, shifts

the demolition of lincoln elementary, “free bricks”

kindergarten field trip to a library now gone

hundred year old high school barely clinging on

rose-tinted glasses hide bruised reminders that

home’s like a water-stained photo

unknowing of its own edges bleeding

once so happy to leave, “see the world”

my eyes stay shut most days now

vibrant saturation, the memories twirl

gently reminding me how

my world exists in plastic containers

red and glistening, my family’s labor

our ordinary existence

extended family dinners on sundays

facetiming to say hi, it’s not the same dad

rebuilt the shelf to house the new TV it’s

enormous, as tall as my baby brother

guess he’s not a baby anymore

things change too fast

melancholy, my nostalgia

clings to me, tart and sticky,

I feel so sweet and sour.