Take Care/Warmly
As the worst snowstorm in a decade encroaches, I pour canned chicken noodle soup into a pot on the stove and weep. I am sick, and I want my mother’s globby, bland mess of cháo. I want my father to yell at me that I am not sick, then yell at me for vomiting in the sink. I want to vomit a dozen times then faint in the shower, and wake up just to vomit again. I want to be suffocated by Vaporub and humidifier steam. I want to be reminded to not burden others and not be dramatic and not forget what I owe and do not deserve and not remember what was done to me and not need any caring for. I want to be taken care of in the worst of ways. I want to be reminded that I can be taken care of in the best of ways. I want to make a promise to you. That when the blizzard hits, I will let you in and turn on the heat and forget the gas bill. I will knit you a scarf and offer you hot tea and hot soup and hot poetry. I will hold your cold hands. I will let you warm them on me. I will not shut you out with the cold. I will never be so sick as to stop being a lover and a friend and a furnace and an artist and a mother. I will care for you. I will care sweetly. I will care tenderly. I will care madly. What other way is there?
Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin (they/them) is a queer and trans, biracial, Vietnamese unamerican diaspora writer based in Boston, MA. Their work revolves around the intersection of dreaming/fantasizing/futurizing and grieving, and focuses on topics of care, diaspora, transness, ecology, empire, and intergenerational histories. The Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Xenolithic Edges Literary, Kyla-Yến’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions, and appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, ANMLY, fifth wheel press, DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, and other publications. They are a 2026 BIPOC Fellow for Trans Poetics Archive, a Press Editor for Half Mystic Press, and a Co-Coordinator for Sundress Publications’ Poets in Pajamas reading series, and have taught writing workshops independently as well as for Split This Rock, Mendocino Art Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), and more. Their work has been supported by Tin House, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Seventh Wave, Abode Press, and more. You can visit Kyla-Yến’s author page at www.kylayenhuynhgiffin.com, and find them on Instagram @yenshrine.