Pitch Correction

There is an off note.
True, it is pitch perfect, but that is exactly what is off about it.
I am chopping onions as if I have not just witnessed a genocide.
You are stirring the pan.
How precisely we play our roles!
It is better if instruments are not so insistently tuned.
A metallic twang occurs when two notes pitched
To perfection collide.
There is an off note.
My delusions scatter the floor, hapless executions.
You set the dinner table while humming an old Chinese hit.
I smile into my bowl and dab the glistening gash across my throat.
Your tendency toward duplicity is what cuts me the most—cold blooded incision.
Your lips deny absolution.
I’m a bitch about it, but all I wanted to hear was—
There is an off note.
Our scores will never align, so I play along with your deception.
The melody becomes varnished beyond recognition.
It is all off, but that does not matter.
This is precisely how you intend it to be.
Time passes,
Effaces animosity. I boil you congee on Sunday afternoons
To tame your weary bones. I am soft,
Soft, when I come home to fresh
Bowls of steaming rice on late Thursday nights
After grueling track meets. Our lines diverge,
Reassume their natural tendencies. You are slightly sharp
And I am often flat, but that is just
How it happens to be.
A year and a half later, home from college for the first time.
I am chopping onions, when my hands stop and my eyes widen.
There—What—is—have—an—you—off—done?—note.
What the hell are you talking about? I never wanted
To go to college in the first place. I couldn’t care less
If I went to the East Coast or the West Coast.
Aiyah, but you did! You wanted to go to the East Coast,
Just like your brother, because you couldn’t wait
To get away from home—from me! I remember!
You remember?
I should laugh. I am the one who remembers.
This correction you make is insignificant but
What is this puppeteering? The strings—tug!—
At my limbs, force me into a position of regularity.
I am not the ignorant child any more than you are the maltreated matron.
We were not composed according to any key, and your lines were never so sickeningly
sweet.
I should be scornful.
I could be hurt.
Tell me, mother—please.
What else do you remember?

Hanwen Zhang is a sophomore Cognitive Science major at the University of Southern California. You can find his instagram here.