Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

It’s always felt like pressing into a bruise to talk about June. It’s why I don’t do it. I shrug. “I just wish she liked me.”

I loved observing my mother, as unknowable as she was.

I ate with the ring held tight in my fist as she extracted the smallest bones of the fish, the tricky feathery ones below the fins, and fed me the meat.

While Mom was gone, I tried rubbing my own ear and was shocked by how loud and insistent it was, how unpleasant. It never occurred to me that she might not be experiencing the exact soothing, quieting sensation I was. I hadn’t known I was a nuisance.

“I just want Mom to like me.”

When I had my wisdom teeth pulled last year, I couldn’t stop rooting in the metallic socket, dislodging the blood clot with my tongue, exposing all the nerves. The pain had been so stunning and clear. It was both precise and expansive. I like that I could control when that zip of agony coursed through my head. It made everything and everyone else so quiet.

Humans need to share their darkest parts. Unburdening makes you closer to everyone. There’s that thing that all addicts have, that you’re a piece of shit in the center of the universe. That everybody’s obsessed with the ways you fall short. But the truth is, we all have the same, boring problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is talk about it. It makes no sense, but glory if it doesn’t work like a charm.