After Mummy boils chicken, she neatly chops the meat into many pieces, the cleaver reflecting late afternoon light. Sometimes she pauses to hand me a tender morsel, her fingers gleaming with fat. Taste, she cajoles. This is good chicken, Na.

A stripped bone is pressed into my hand. Break the bone with your teeth. Suck. I taste something richly indescribable.

...

Two cups of coffee, cinnamon toast, one bowl of dal, potato naan and one red apple was all I ate yesterday, along with a foul teaspoonful of frustration I swallowed at work. Oh my. That night, I was cuckoo, a cranky ball of frantic limbs and agitated heart, all melodramatic fury until under my eyelids glinted sharp thick pieces of broken glass. Welts adorned skin, scarlet bracelets wet to the touch. The fantasy soothed the petulant child somehow, enough for me to reach under the pillow for a novel, Dogeaters, by Jessica Hagedorn.

Breathe deeply. Exhale.

In those pages, I was finally nourished; the last few days seem insignificant after one has sucked long on the marrow of language.

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