"No Port, No Harbour", Faith Christine Lai
I hate how every conversation I start
these days becomes one about race. What’s the
big deal? And suddenly I’m reeking of fishing
village, as I do when I joke about things
only because they make me uncomfortable.
When I pronounce post-colonial, but with
centralised vowels. When I get too excited
in a pub and, slightly drunk, loudly start
a conversation about the relevant counterfactuals.
S walked me home that night, red-faced. With him
I decentralise my breath, pushing it from tightened
chest through to tightly clasped vowels. It’s difficult,
I say. In most of these, nobody asks where I’m from
only because I don’t exist. We never worry what people say,
because we’d never have met. And we’d still be speaking
different languages, but not just as metaphor.