My parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?" because they don't love me

i have been wanting to articulate this thought for a while, i wanted to explain what was around it, but now i realize you know, it speaks for itself

at one point, i couldn't keep my words in anymore, and they flooded the world, and then i smashed them back down again because of one dude singlehandedly breaking a promise

and i got scared and stopped writing and stopped tweeting for six years

anyway

i think it's pretty straightforward

it's really a one-line poem

i wanted to explain everything around it

but there's nothing to explain

you know the clichés and the tropes people say

"we"

"asians"?

flatten, flatten, flatten

/

My parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?" because they don't love me

i think anything i could say about being a racialized human ("racialized body", i don't know, i don't know the meanings of words) on the colonized land built by & filled with white supremacists i grew up on... flattens, flattens, flattens

people 

today i think about

lately i've been thinking about

i hate everyone

i wrote something called "i hate everybody" and didn't publish it

but it's true

i hate everybody

with deep, deep envy.

i tell myself i am this or that
i am without any judgment or thoughts or negative feelings or insecurities or self-consciousness
when i see these in others, i try to figure out the exact perfect words to try to make them feel better
so they don't feel insecure around me
or worse, express it

I think about the repeated graphic
among some chinese-usameriKKKans-calling-themselves-"asian"-usameriKKKans-calling-themselves-"asian-ameriKans"

"Have you eaten yet?"

the answer is no. i haven't.
i ate dry ramen by myself in elementary school
and then i cooked ramen by myself in 6th grade on dark autumn nights alone at home
and then i cooked ramen by myself in 9th grade before meals
and my parents called me poor for wanting to eat brown rice.

have i eaten yet? no
i'm hungry
i'm hungry
i'm hungry

a year ago, a massacre happened.
what did i do?
i had no chinese friends back then
really

I am trying to write the perfect poem.
The perfect poem will tell you in the perfect words that
I am angry about...
But the perfect poem will tell you in the perfect words that I am also angry about the fact that every chinese person i know would say that their parents love them.

a year ago, a massacre happened
i did not eat rice porridge
my queer vietnamese-chinese-raised-in-usameriKKKa ("should we use the word 'american'?" "should we use the word 'western'?" i ask my new comrade, as we stay up until 3am talking about usameriKKKan imperialism and capitalism. "please don't talk about cops after midnight"
i requested — "shit") therapist quit on me a few hours before the shooting happened

i started hearing voices in my head
i did not eat rice porridge
i started hearing voices in my head

and i lost my appetite for a year and 28 days and counting

i just want to write a poem that tells you

i hate seeing every(??? Not All) asian kid in this country say " `have you eaten yet?‘ means `i love you‘ "

because
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me

my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me
my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me

my parents never asked me "have you eaten yet?"
because they don't love me

#poetry