he arrived at Mama's house at 6.45pm
in the white Toyota space wagon;
heavy-lidded, drugged with cartoons
and strange permanent lethargy

his oldest cousin the family gypsy,
usually brash, scooped him Mama's
beehoon hoping to soothe what was
to come, as he sat shell-like

the adults sucked on pork ribs, chomped
kailan, lovingly made by humble-Mama-
watching-the-smiles, ignoring the gypsy's
organic food, ignoring the PSLE results.

after leaving the porcelain platters for
the maids they crowded around him
as he began a second mountain of beehoon
looking down at his gleaming kailan

at his brown pork gravy
at his homemade barley water
at the slices of carrots and dried shrimps
in the thin sticky strands of beehoon

they rubbed his head too lovingly
saying it's okay, you tried your best
222 is not bad, as his mother threatened
to implode after $3000 on tuition
(not knowing how to love; loving too much)

her ever-calm spouse asked everyone if
they wanted kopi; it gave his gentle hands
something to do. the boy, twelve, munched the
dinner he loved; did you know he loved food?

and medieval weapons? the gypsy got him a weapon
encyclopaedia last Christmas. he secretly wanted
a secondary school where they had taekwondo
as a CCA, but gave monosyllabic replies

to the government workers, engineers, teachers,
IT managers, his brother, his sisters, his cousins,
his grandmother who didn't understand english,
who surrounded him and his beehoon mountain.

the dead grandfather watched from a corner of
the old living room that had been rebuilt as a
modern-day grey asylum, and put his soft wrinkled
hands on the head of the boy who was three when he died.

the gypsy took the hand of the youngest one
and led her upstairs for stories and craft
but she was bored and went to watch Korean TV;
the maids huddled around beehoon at the back.