What Hunger

Our family didn’t apologize with words. We were blunt about everything else, but apologies felt stilted, strange. We showed remorse through kindness, a favor, a small gift. Sometimes we continued like normal, as though there had been no fight.

You think things are bad one day. You think it can’t get any worse. Then it does.

You've got people who actually do good things, run charities, hel the poor. Yeah they're doing good things, but what's the incentive behind it? There's always an incentive. They want the attention or the tax benefits. Or they're being good because they want to go to heaven...But if you're being good just to get into heaven, are you actually being good? Or are you being selfish?

I wanted him to savor this time. Because one day he would lose it all. I would unleash a flood that would collapse this lovely world he’d built, tearing his flesh from his bone, stripping him raw of everything that gave him life.

I thought we looked suspicious watering the yard in the dark. “We’re Vietnamese. They’ll think we’re just being strange like usual,” she said, flicking her hand.

I was sick of them. They always stepped in at the wrong time. They never paid attention when it counted—never showed up to our choir concerts or class charity events. They liked Tommy’s grades, but they never went to the awards nights to celebrate him. When we didn’t want them around, that was when our parents cared. That was when they suddenly interfered.

It’s okay to be lighthearted. It’s good to enjoy things when you’re young. Life is hard already. You need to find those little moments that make it worthwhile.

Because angry tears and sad tears all looked the same.

My mother’s world was made only of her spouse and children. No one else could enter it.

Mẹ and Ba never took us on vacations or signed us up for summer activities. Tommy and I never questioned why—it was all the time, money, and effort that our parents simply didn’t have for us. So we made do with what we had in the house and the backyard.