By Tharani Balachandran
My sisters and I are lounging through a hot summer
with our cousins in the suburbs.
We ignore the sunshine outside and hole up in the basement,
eating popsicles and playing cards and waiting to be fed.
At breakfast, my grandfather eats Froot Loops with me.
I stare into the bowl and think about how his brittle nails look like the cereal.
My aunts take their pills, one by one;
blue and white, red and green, they look like candy
to my seven-year-old brain.
There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands,
too many to count.
In the afternoon, my mother makes batches of our favorite snack
skinny coils of deep-fried dough spiced delicately with coriander and cumin seeds
that we just can't get enough of.
At dinner, my cousins fight over who gets to eat the fish’s eye
because our parents tell us it will make us smarter.
I look at the fish lying on the table
and decide that I am smart enough.
My aunt supervises me eating with a wooden spoon at the ready
my mother tells her, we don’t hit children who don’t eat
but she doesn’t need to worry about me here.
At home, I am a picky eater, white bread sugar sandwiches and Kraft Dinner
but here I will eat everything my aunts cook, no matter how spicy it is
or what it looks like: everything is delicious.
Our visits are all snacks and laughter.
My father finds my cousin's scrunchie between the couch cushions
and says, here you go, I found your munchie
and we laugh until happy tears roll down our cheeks
This is before
when I was the only one allowed to laugh at my parents
before anyone at school tells me that my favorite snack looks like worms
before my grandfather dies
and I see my father cry for the first time.
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