yu yuan mian

Those days come to mind
when the four of us
(didi and mei weren’t born yet)

made our way to bedok central, the hawker centre
that always seemed to me
to be in the very centre
of that rustic neighbourhood, where the blue of the swimming complex splashed onto the red
of the brick-lined pavements, and there
raised above the ground,
with formidable steps,
forbidding to my minute self,

promised a steaming bowl
of fishball noodles and cool tau huey chui.

The breakfast of innocence,
when yellow noodles resting in red melamine,
sometimes the smooth and silk of tau huey, placid
in a tortoise-shell patterned bowl,
was all that need suffice.

He was silent, as ever, within and yet without
the world that was our family,
even as you broke
into manageable portions the
globes of pulverised white-fleshed meat,

as I waited patiently
oblivious to the world around me.