Mother doesn't get it by Cyril Wong

I don't know why I don't know love.

I don't know why my sister sleeps with white men and likes it.

I don't know why I don't like sex.

I don't know why I turned into my mother no matter how hard I resisted.

I don't know why my son does not look at me in the eye anymore.

I don't know why my daughter used to bring home other girls dressed as boys.

I don't know why my daughter likes men now and the men are never Chinese.

I don't know why I believe in God even though He does little to make me happy. I don't know why I can say such things and still believe I will go to heaven.

I don't know why I keep waking up in the middle of the night after dreaming of lying at the bottom of a pool.

I don't know why even as there is no light in dreams I can feel I'm not alone and that something is waiting to hold me down to drown.

I don't know why my husband loves to mop the floor to a meaningless shine.

I don't know why the self is a shadow I keep trying to pin down to point in one direction.

I don't know why this home is where my heart is no longer.

I don't know why my body shrinks with age but my loneliness never does.

I don't know why my children watch me with their father's hollowed eyes.

I don't know why I keep telling my son I will kill myself if he refuses to marry.

I don't know why I never kill myself.

I don't know why it is precisely these moments when I am almost sure I am happy that doubt pours inside me like a cloud of mosquitoes through the grate of a roadside drain I saw in India and could not stop staring.

I don't know why I can almost forget my pain when I am at my busiest and most distracted.

I don't know why I still believe the dream of the happy life will surely fit itself back inside my body tighter like a screw tomorrow.

I don't know why the pain comes back.