In the invitation, I tell them for the seventeenth time
(the fourth in writing), that I am gay. 

In the invitation, I include a picture of my boyfriend
& write, You’ve met him two times. But this time, 

you will ask him things other than can you pass the
whatever. You will ask him 

about him. You will enjoy dinner. You will be
enjoyable. Please RSVP. 

They RSVP. They come.
They sit at the table & ask my boyfriend 

the first of the conversation starters I slip them
upon arrival: How is work going? 

I’m like the kid in Home Alone, orchestrating
every movement of a proper family, as if a pair 

of scary yet deeply incompetent burglars
is watching from the outside. 

My boyfriend responds in his chipper way.
I pass my father a bowl of fish ball soup—So comforting, 

isn’t it? My mother smiles her best
Sitting with Her Son’s Boyfriend 

Who Is a Boy Smile. I smile my Hurray for Doing
a Little Better Smile.

Everyone eats soup.
Then, my mother turns 

to me, whispers in Mandarin, Is he coming with you
for Thanksgiving? My good friend is & she wouldn’t like 

this. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, pulling
on the string that makes my cardboard mother 

more motherly, except she is
not cardboard, she is 

already, exceedingly my mother. Waiting
for my answer. 

While my father opens up
a Boston Globe, when the invitation 

clearly stated: No security
blankets. I’m like the kid 

in Home Alone, except the home
is my apartment, & I’m much older, & not alone, 

& not the one who needs
to learn, has to—Remind me 

what’s in that recipe again, my boyfriend says
to my mother, as though they have always, easily 

talked. As though no one has told him
many times, what a nonlinear slapstick meets 

slasher flick meets psychological
pit he is now co-starring in. 

Remind me, he says
to our family.

Matthew 22: 1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent others, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, maltreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” They went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.’