When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

by Chen Chen

I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be. I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers. She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.

It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person.

But it wasn’t—every oak & pine & birch in the complex belonged to the landlord, whether or not he’d climbed each one himself.

I didn’t tell him I spent all night in a tree because my mother slapped me after I told her I might be gay. I didn’t tell him that I hit her back, that my father tried holding us apart like the universe’s saddest referee.

With the earthquake in my other country. With my mother’s long-distance calls. With my aunt’s calls from China, when the towers fell. How far are you from New York? How far are you from New York?

With cities fueled by scars. With the footprint of a star. With the white boy I liked. With him calling me ugly. With my knees on the floor. With my hands begging for straighter teeth, lighter skin, blue eyes, green eyes, any eyes brighter, other than mine.

They ask if I remember them, the aunts, the uncles, & I say Yes it’s coming back, I say Of course, when it’s No not at all, because when I last saw them I was three, & the China of my first three years is largely make-believe,

even in winter, no I don’t think the earth ever stops being alive, just ask Allen or his boyfriend Walt or anyone who’s recently had an orgasm or two.

Don’t cry, don’t be sad, as if my sadness could sink this room, this apartment, this whole city not Paris. But does my sadness always need to be your sadness?

I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time fall completely apart & everyone just says, It’s raining, & someone might even bring cats & dogs into it, no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see a professional.

I’m envious of jealous God because although he’s been dead for ages, everyone keeps caring about him, or at least saying his name, & God knows who’ll do that for me, ten, twenty years after I go.

Think of peace & how the Buddhists say it is found through silence. Think of silence & how Audre Lorde says it will not protect you.

What does it mean, to sing in the language of those who have killed your mother, would kill her again?

You are an unhappy thing, cursed with legs, every step carrying the love who left, the love you left, the job lost, the mountain of low, the mounting lack.

I admire my horoscope for its conviction. I envy its consistency. Every day. Every day, there is a future to be aggressively vaguer about.

To be a more comfortable hospital bed for my mother. To be no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time, America for my uncle, who wants to be China for me.

I want a love as dirty as a snowball fight in the sludge, under grimy yellow lights. I want this winter inside my lungs.

I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in love with repetition, in love, in love. Foolish repetition, wise repetition.

Do I love my mother? Do I have to forgive in order to love? Or do I have to love for forgiveness to even be possible?