It’s my mother’s birthday today. I know the year she was born. I know she’s sixty-six. I know her Chinese name, her English name, and the nickname her sisters called her. I know she needs to turn the tap on and off, on and off, on and off before she goes to sleep. I know she cried when Princess Diana died, and again...

I. This is a love story. I passed him a pencil in English class. When the bell rang, he chased me down the hallway to return it. A few months later, we walked to class hand-in-hand. We were happy. Weren’t we? I looked at the smooth slide of his smile and wondered if this was love. I folded myself into the shape he...

I swim out to sea. I float in seafoam glass, the rolling waves the cradle of someone’s arms. They carry me to jagged waters, and the colour of it is a cumulonimbus sky. I plunge into its depths. I can’t see because my eyes are closed. My arms and feet are pushing at the water as if they alone could move the sea....

On the last day of their visit, I spent the day with my niece. She liked yogurt as a beverage and watching AI-generated memes on YouTube. At eight years of age, she was more solemn than she had been the year before. She used to tell me, “I missed you. Did you miss me?” Now, she was absent of love declarations, shy...

We’re so different. She brought gifts from Hong Kong: a moisturizer, hair mascara, hair treatment oil, and face masks. I know what the moisturizer and face masks are for; I have no idea what hair mascara and hair oil are supposed to do. “What are these?” I asked. “They’re for your hair. Use the hair mascara when you...

You’re six when you fly for the first time. You tell the girl beside you in class that you’re moving away. You don’t know where. You’re not her friend. You say goodbye anyway. The next day, you cross an ocean ten thousand kilometres away to somewhere you’ve never seen. School starts. You’re in Grade Two. Your hand...

K.: “Just because things don’t go according to plan doesn’t mean the world is going to go up in flames. You need to relax and just let things happen.” How do I do that when it feels like a moral failing? When it feels like proof that everything is precariously held together by some stupid strip of scotch tape that’s...

Mom, on the phone: “There are raccoons outside. That’s really lucky, right? I woke up and saw them in our backyard. They’re looking for food and playing with the water. They usually only come out at night, so seeing them during the day must be a good omen.” I see raccoons during the day all the time up on the...

K.: “You let them take and take from you and every year there is less and less of you.” It’s bleak, but I don’t think I can stop them. At some point, there’ll be nothing left to take, right?

A complete stranger: “Wow, I don’t hear an accent at all when you talk. Where are you from?” I could have this conversation in my sleep. The only time I can count on this particular conversation not happening is when I’m speaking to someone on the phone.

Every Saturday, we would walk twenty minutes from home to the nearest dim sum restaurant. We would order the same dishes: taro dumplings, curry squid, lotus leaf rice, and sometimes Malay sponge cake as dessert for me. Then we’d walk twenty minutes back home, where you would sit in a rocking chair and play cards,...