Russell Jeung says
Chinese people can speak two love languages fluently:
food
and
sacrifice.

Every time I visit her apartment,
my grandma does two things:
she cooks pan fried dumplings
(my favorite dish since I was a child);
and she presses a new $100 bill into my hand,
Benjamin Franklin wrapped in a red envelope
like an emperor in his robe.

She lives across from the Montgomery Mall,
where we would walk after lunch,
bellies straining,
to search up and down the aisles of K*B Toys.
I would lie on her pink-purple carpet through the late afternoon
playing with my new action figure or LEGO set
as she watched the Chinese news on her old TV set.

Grandma is an immigrant —
worked to support three sons —
knows how to leave everything behind —
knows that these dollars
are nothing more than a nursery of fading green,
press into your palm my stored labors
which you will spend on late afternoons with me.

If I am going to live in a world where
kisses taste like summer
and
songs sing like two palms warm against each other,
I will need to speak
In a language I haven’t yet mastered,
but need to.

Russell Jeung says
Chinese people can speak two love languages fluently:
food
and
sacrifice.