Place my heart on a large plate

Encircle the red thing with sugar
Number the black holes on it
Inject with honey soaked water

So my heart is not at all bitter

Previously published in Yuan Yang.

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Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born writer. She is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and the poetry editor of Fleeting Magazine. “Sweet Heart” was her very first published poem. Tammy’s “Different Ways of Saying Love” and “In Private, I Write to You My Lady” are also in Reprint.

Object(s) to bring back to life: “My paternal grandmother. She passed away before my sisters and I had the ability to make money. If she were alive, I would like to take her to dim sum and buy her very plush things. I would like to show her a little of the world instead of putting imported oranges on the altar for her ghost. Impossible to bring back: The time when I was oblivious to the difference between ‘l’ and ‘r’. The days when people were not obsessed with iPhones and other similar devices. A cooler Earth.”