If this is your first time reading Kellee Ngan's work, you're in for a treat--this Vancouver writer's prose has equal parts humour and pathos. You can read more of her writing in Geist, Grain, Witness, Poetry Is Dead and, most recently, the anthology Growing Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press, 2017). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and I've been dreaming of the day I get to pick up her forthcoming YA novel ever since I read a rough draft in workshop.
You Are What You Eat
Flat whites, artisanal cheese, the correct pronunciation of Gewurztraminer: We trade affection in the form of a food basket, rely on gut feeling to gauge the fullness of our hearts. Our eyes deceive us, too. Tell us that white plates make everything more palatable, even though an apple is an apple is an apple despite its ripeness. You failed to cry at my father’s funeral. I blamed distance, marvelled at your deportment. But as I watch you weep over a tasting menu typed on brown deli paper, whet by suggestions, I question what you might be made of.
(written by Kellee Ngan and read by Chioke I'Anson)
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