There’s an apatosaurus I used to ride home from kindergarten every day; she’s cramped inside

an olive Chevrolet Captiva.

 

Her breath is Tropical Capri-sun. I miss the weight of her fat tail curling around my stomach,

the armpit-hot dog days when Ma agrees to roll down the mustard

 

-tinted windows so Ivan and I could turtle our necks and serenade clouds with Jay Chou.

There’s Box hill Central and a vein of Chinese restaurants, blotches

 

of cherry lanterns blossoming until my apatosaurus parks us on Thiele Street,

the possums already clicking on our rooftop by peach sunset.

 

Almost 6pm, we check on the fuzzy litter of lemon-cream chicks Ivan brought home

for a school project, their cartoonist beaks peck holes into the freshly

 

-trimmed grass. We cage them again. We eat cold tomatoes and supermarket roast chicken

for dinner, Ninja Warriors holler on the TV between ads of white women

 

selling Kleenex. Starlight leaks inside like minnows two episodes past and it’s cold

because Ivan punctured a hole into the plexiglass

 

with a soccer ball whilst dancing to Sexy and I know it in neon underwear with his friends.

Ma is probably scrubbing the dishes in the kitchen. We’re children so

 

we’re not sure. Ba is in Shanghai; he Facetimed us last week to pick out the wallpaper

for our new rooms back “home”. Ma enters the living room and palms

 

our foreheads, her hands are smooth, cool watermelon.

In dreamland, I’m tracing a heart-shaped abalone shell and a wishbone

 

protrudes from my throat waiting to snap, whilst I’m waiting

to be mended with cotton candy.