In our house, we had many pictures. They adorned the white walls, dangling, bringing character to our otherwise ordinary home. 

Our centrepiece was displayed in the living room, for all to see. A long, golden framed picture, depicting a man wrapped in red and blue. On either side of him were six other men, talking and feasting amongst themselves. Each had a goblet and a loaf of bread with them. 

This picture was the pride of our home, many visitors marvelling at its wonder during their visits. Some even proclaiming how wonderful the man in the middle was and exalting him. 

Surrounding this piece, we had many, individual photos. Photos from family trips. Photos of relatives. A happy family. A loving family. Laughing. Smiling. Perfectly shot. Captured in time. 

I was there too. In each photo. Me. Little, insignificant me. Short boy. Black hair. I’d have an exaggerated smile on my face, eyes squinted, my arms thrown around my siblings’ shoulders. We would pose in front of many beautiful places, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Hachiko dog statue, or even Taipei 101. 

Don’t get me wrong. Life was wonderful, having our parents drag us to place after place, holiday after holiday. We travelled well. We ate well. We all got along well. One might even say our family was perfect. Everything looked normal from the outside, but if you leant forward and inspected closer? You could see the minuscule fractures, so tiny, they could easily be missed. 

I walk through the hallways now. I’m alone. Nothing except for the sound of my feet against the cold wooden floorboards. I don’t know where my family is. They’re out, maybe. I glance up at the walls. There are so many photos. I’m not sure where to start. I reach out my hand, and my fingers gravitate towards a small picture. It’s hung up in the corner, almost forgotten, left alone in the dark. My fingertips trace the edge of the wooden frame, slowly moving my hand towards the centre of the photo.

I stood in front of the church. My dad’s church to be more precise. The one which he had pastored for eight consecutive years. The sun beat down, showering our brick church in a yellow glow.

‘Over here!’ My brother called me over. I slid in and swung my arm around my second brother’s shoulder. Our friend Bob Junior stood in the middle, but we called him BJ. My oldest brother stood on the other side of him. BJ stood taller than the rest of us. His wild puffy hair also gave him a few extra centimetres.

‘Three, two, one … cheese!’ I threw my hands up in a peace sign while BJ’s father snapped a photo. My brothers smiled. So did BJ. I caught myself staring too long, but I didn’t want to look away. Not yet. I probably wouldn’t get to see him again. Tomorrow we move to Melbourne, and I wanted to cherish every second I had with him, even if the feeling was unrequited. We crowded in, looking at the photo. His hand brushed mine, faintly. I pretended not to notice, but I knew I would be thinking about it for days to come.

‘It looks good,’ BJ’s father said. We nodded our heads in agreement. We stood around in awkward silence. No one dared to make the next move. Because if we did then, we knew, we would be rushing the inevitable. I stared at BJ, trying to catch his eye, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he looked down at the rocky floor. Grey and dull, just like my new life without my first major crush. No one to look forward to seeing every Sunday.

‘We have to go now,’ BJ’s father placed a steady hand on his shoulder. I sighed, kicking a small stone. BJ hugged my brothers first, muttering their final goodbyes. Then he reached me. We wrapped our arms around each other and in that moment, I didn’t want to ever let go.

‘It was nice knowing you Wes,’ he said.

‘Likewise,’ I took a deep breath and inhaled his scent for the last time.

I release my fingers from the frame; the memory fades away. I’m back in my living room. I take a step back and let out a deep breath. It’s been years since I last thought of BJ, but as I look at the framed picture of us together, it is enough to bring a smile to my face.

A sudden, cool chill whips around me. I shiver, rubbing my hands together and walk towards our mantle. Beneath that is our fireplace. It’s old and rusty and doesn’t work anymore, but the mantle is pretty, decorated with our old drawings and photographs.

I inspect each photo. They are tinier here. Not as grand as the ones hanging on the walls, but still priceless and just as treasured. Eventually, my gaze settles on a frame in the middle.

A potluck laid out in front of me. There’s fried chicken, dim sums, pork belly and just about every Southeast Asian delicacy you could think of. Their sweet aroma wafted into my nostrils, and my stomach instantly growled. I reached for a paper plate and immediately started to load up. Noodles? Check. Sushi? Check. Calamari? Check. My arm moved with a mind of its own, piling and piling, until there was a mountain of food on my plate.

I looked down and beamed, practically drooling already. I carefully clutched onto my plate and made a beeline to the corner where my family was sitting. As soon as I sat down, my mum glared at me. We locked eyes, hers darted at my mountain of food on my plate. I shrugged it off and took a bite. Her face darkened and her lips curled. She abruptly stood up and grabbed me forcefully by my arm, pulling me up.

‘Alright, we’re leaving now,’ Mum ordered.

My stomach growls upon remembering. I spin around and sit down on the couch facing the coffee table. It’s a soft, grey, couch which doubles as a sofa bed. I haven’t used it often, except during Covid, when I’d sit there every Sunday during our Zoom church services. The coffee table in front of me is black. It’s made from fake wood, and along with a bowl of fruit which serves as the centrepiece, other pictures decorate the rest of the coffee table too. They’re small. Just like the ones on the mantelpiece. One photo catches my eye. It’s on the left of the fruit bowl, close to the edge of the table. It has a black frame, the glass in the top right corner partially splintering downwards.

I find myself in the kitchen, being restrained by my parents.

‘… and if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Matthew 5:30.’ My father recited.

‘So now,’ my mum spat, ‘because you are still texting men, and your fingers are causing you to sin, we must chop them off. That’s the only way for you to stop sinning, right?’

‘No,’ I shook my head furiously. ‘Please. No.’ I attempted to rip my hand away, but my father had pinned it down to the bench-top, spreading my fingers out.

‘This isn’t child abuse,’ my mum continued, ‘because you abused us first by lying to us.’

‘Stop!’ I cried, but my pleas fell on deaf ears, and my dad took out the butcher’s knife. I squeezed my eyes, not daring to look, and waited for the sound of metal on bone, for the feeling of blood gushing out my detached fingers. But there was nothing. My parents looked at me with a glint in their eye.

‘Next time, if we catch you again, then we’ll really chop your fingers off.’ I shuddered, hoping there wouldn’t be a next time. Hoping I could be free from this hellhole.

‘You won’t be sleeping upstairs anymore,’ my father stated, ‘you’re switching rooms so we can keep a watchful eye on you.’ I whimpered as I cried myself to sleep that night, curled up in the room downstairs. Uncontrollable sobs took over my body, like waves of strong stomach pains when one has food poisoning. I cried until my eyes were swollen shut. I cried until I had no more tears left. I cried until sleep took a hold over me, a temporary reprieve from my dark and miserable life. The next day, I reached out for help, and despite my friend offering to help me leave, I couldn’t go through with it.

A few days later, I laid on the mattress reading a book. Fire & Blood by George RR Martin. My parents were in their room next door watching some Chinese TV show. There was a sudden loud banging on our door. I heard the shuffling of my parents’ feet as they got out of bed and wobbled over to the front door, swaddled in their velvet robes.

I stopped paying any more attention and returned to my book.

‘Wesley!’ My dad barged into the room. ‘The police want to talk to you.’ A cold sweat took over me. I immediately wracked my brain, trying to think of all the things I could have possibly done wrong which warranted my arrest, but I could not think of anything. With each step I took, the panic in my chest rose, choking and constricting the life out of me. What crime had I committed? My palms felt clammy, and as I reached the front door, I wiped them on my pants.

‘Wesley, do you mind if we talk to you for a bit?’ one of the officers asked. I slowly nodded my head, not daring to defy a policewoman’s orders. She led me away to our driveway while the other officer stayed to talk to my parents.

‘You’re not in trouble. Your friend told us about everything that happened recently.’

My eyes widened.

‘Yeah, I just had a little trouble with my parents is all,’ I bit my lip, looking away.

‘Could you tell me more about what happened?’

I started to recount the story, telling her in full detail everything that had happened over the past week.

The officer looked at me with furrowed brows. ‘I’m sorry that happened to you. What your parents did to you was not okay and constitutes domestic violence.’

‘Really?’ I asked, surprised. My breath turned into vapour against the cool spring night.

‘Yes,’ the officer replied. ‘Right now, my partner is telling your parents that we’re conducting house calls to see how university-aged kids are coping during lockdown. I’ll head on over and tell her what’s happened, and you’ll make a choice. You can choose to either stay with your parents, or we can take you away right now. If you choose to leave, we’ll serve your parents with intervention orders. We don’t condone this type of behaviour in Victoria.’ My breath caught in my throat. Now that I was really faced with this decision, I had no idea what to choose. I could choose to stay with my parents and continue to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, or I could finally have my freedom and come to terms with my sexuality. I took a deep breath.

‘I’d like to leave please.’

‘Alright,’ the officer nodded, ‘we’ll have a chat to your parents and serve them with the intervention orders.’ She let me into the police car and strolled to the front door where the other officer was still talking to my parents. From a distance, I could barely see what was happening. No clue as to what my future would be like. Then, they headed inside and left me in the car. Just me, myself and my anxious thoughts. Questioning whether I made the right choice. Whether I would be a bad son for choosing to leave. Whether I had betrayed my family. After what felt like ages, the police finally came back.

‘Your mum packed you a bag of clothes,’ the same officer handed me a backpack, and I balanced it on my lap. ‘We’ll take you to your friend’s place now.’

They started the ignition and slowly drove away. My home drifted further into the distance. I shut my eyes to the world and pulled my knees to my chest, burying my head. A million sharp voices screamed inside my mind, berating me, condemning me to Hell. I clutched my ears, trying to shake the voices out, but they continued. All I wanted in that moment was to stop the car and dash back to my parents. I didn’t want to face the world by myself. But I stayed. Buckled to my seat.

I set down the frame, the broken shards tumbling out and falling onto the floor. I pinch the edge of my photo with my thumb and finger and lift it out, placing it neatly on the coffee table.

Then, I pull out another image and set it in place of the original photo. I gather up the bits of glass and delicately attempt to put them back together like pieces of a puzzle, taking care to not accidentally cut any of my fingers. I meld the glass together using super glue, and after I’ve given sufficient time for the glue to dry, I prop up the new photo.

I step back to admire my new handiwork.

Standing proudly with a flag decorated with the colours of the rainbow draped over my shoulders, I smile happily, allowing the flag to flutter in the wind. Though the photo may not look perfect with the cracked glass, it represents me, unapologetically myself.