In This Place Where Light Never Sleeps
I was fourteen when stories about the success of my distant cousins were prepared on the dining table—broiled with flying colors and marinated with high paying-jobs I wouldn’t dare to taste. The sciences the main dish. Engineering the leanest of all meat while law is just another appetizer. But I was too mesmerized with my own plate that I did not care to eat, just to contemplate the greenness of the greens, how plain and domestic rice is, how the meat feels like rubber between my molars and how the glass seems half-empty, not half-full. The dessert course those in-demand, always poured over with caramelized sugar. And as they feast on these cuisines, privately, my mind was already off the dinner and into my grandfather’s bedtime stories that when other people close their eyes to sleep...
