I.
billy gets white rice & eats it with 
parmesan cheese in one of the blue & yellow kitchen bowls.
i always get chicken fried rice. i pick through
the oily grains to find flecks of scrambled egg.
we're at the breakfast counter & dad eats standing up--
licks general tsao's brown sauce from his thumb
before flicking on the tv for background noise.

II.
some nights you open my chest like a take-out box.
the little metal handle to carry me by.
i tell you non-essential things like how we'd 
get wanton soup for when my mom got home late from work.
like how billy & i would eat chinese leftovers
cold out of the fridge from the white boxes 
early in the morning before our parents got up.