Spring Rolls

I like my lies the way my mother used to make them. Wrapped up in spring roll pastry and thrown into the fryer. Served on a plate to a child who had nothing else to eat, so I’d believe her. Every time she said she loved me between the screaming matches and hung over mornings I believed her. Every time her boyfriend came into my room while she slept the day away and told me to toughen up, I believed her.When she gave up on our american dream and took my baby sister home and left me here, I believed her. I just never understood her. But I am…I was..Faithful to her. See my mom is something like an Abrahamic god, all knowing, all seeing, all powerful and ruthless- viewed with this love us mortals will never understand. We pick up the pieces after a hurricane...porcelain shards of a broken plate hurled against a wall, we murmur among ourselves “she loves us, she does! She just works in mysterious ways, but we don't question her because that would be blasphemy!” So when my science teacher asks me if I'm okay I proselytize and say "I'm fine. My mom is wonderful! Magical even, she can make it rain glass shards inside our apartment, so strong, and brave she can stick a needle in her own arm and not need to squeeze anything except my neck- where I am still so afraid of needles. In my earliest memories we're sitting on an island porch; this warm wind's blowing. She pushes and pulls these oil paints on canvas, willing the sky to become alive on dead skin. It almost glimmers. and I'm in all of her might. In our kitchen we have this photograph of us, and she is lying in a hospital bed, tired like the god she is from the trial of creation, holding me all pink and new. Found out a few years ago that I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, guess her body tried to kill me before it even gave me life. Call it prophetic. old testament. My professor laughed when I told him I'm afraid to work in oil paint, and I laughed too, uncomfortably. I hear her voice spill lout of my mouth and I thumb my prayer beads. It’s been about three years since I’ve spoken to her, by which I mean I don't consider myself particularly religious anymore. But I still get hungry, and by that I mean I still get homesick. But there aren't any Indonesian restaurants in Richmond so I have to remember these recipes on my own, have to make these spring rolls, like she did. Even though I was always home. Sick of the spring rolls she made. So I'm putting what she did on a plate.