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The woman claimed she was Chinese at birth. She was not Chinese.

I am not Chinese but I look the part. Chinese means something different here.

A junk sailing into the meridian becomes a yacht or else a fisherman’s dinghy.

My mother hung an image of a junk on our basement wall.

Our basement painted periwinkle, the color of sea foam.

I dreamt of the sea as a child, drowning, at the bottom of the family pool.

On the floor was a plastic lining. A grill gathering rocks. It worried me that some pieces were too big to fall through.

When I was younger, I thought I had a choice. I thought it was like perspective.

From my perspective, a bottle of Coke is always half full of sand.

If behind me is my lineage, then before me is its rage. Instead of belonging, I would try to replace it.

But somewhere in the shallows, a body is found. And I fit inside, perfectly.