by Valerie Wong

the kids are not coming home

and it’s scary. that was connie’s conclusion at ma ma’s birthday dinner the summer before college. the whole night, she’d been lamenting the fact that marcus was apparently enjoying himself in australia. across the usual platters of cui pei gai and ziu yim dau fu, she honed in on me with her tabloid eyes and asked if i was planning to come back. out of consideration for my mother, who had tensed beside me, i hesitated for a calculated moment. “no,” i told her, with a hopeful finality.

Note:

The Kids are Not Coming Home is not the first poem Eastit has published by Valerie Wong. She had two poems published in the January 2013 issue of Eastlit. These poems were: The Retournees and Understanding.