He was right when he said that I'd never meet anyone like him.

...

Birch beer. Sunlight in cold palms. A photograph of one of the Heron's pieces alongside a train track, my name looping black and jovial, safe inside the letter P.

...

No more beef. Ruth Ozeki's novel My Year of Meats scared even the love of pho outta me. �

Not that I ate so much beef anyways. Mostly pho, because a bowl (of fat rice noodles, Thai basil, sliced sauteed onion, bean sprounts, meat balls and translucent intestines) will always remind me of Mummy and Daddy.

In the kitchen, Mummy grumbles over some sin my black sheep brother or flippant-tongued I have committed yet again. Daddy isn't listening; he's grunting as uniformed men chase pigskin back and forth across the television screen.

In batik sarongs, they hover as satellites, making familiar noises, like tugboats close to their port of choice, bellowing around the little island of girl, who is silently hunched over broth, her glasses steaming opaque as she fumbles through the Sunday newspaper.

I haven't seen them in months, a year really, and now that I have quit the consumption of beef, I suppose I will have to rely on something else to get me closer to them.

<<