our home on native land is a home our ancestors would mourn. 

hundreds of years spent working mountains, forests, pastures and fields,

to relocate 6000km away,

for a chance to eat Kraft’s golden Dinner. 

decades on this earth and I can’t name

my grandmother’s food in her native language;

I long to know the world through the words she would use to describe it;

in losing her tongue I lose my own. 

I’ve never housed five spice in the cupboard,

or let congee bubble on the stove,

or made wonton wrappers from scratch;

there is only enough time to put a frozen pizza in the oven. 

my mother grew up on her sitto’s baklava,

and never made it with her own two hands;

I’ve never had the chance to meet my great grandmother,

but if my mother knew how to prepare her desserts,

I would have known her. 

the “international” grocery aisle is but a bandaid,

for a festering wound from long before 1857;

it is cross-continental homicide,

and “Canadian” convenience is the killer.