My mother’s brittle wrist bends almost to the point
of breaking when she ladles out broth into a ceramic
dish
Fingertips trace the bowl’s rim, breathing in the
steam of sacrifice and bitter remorse like
vegetables that have not yet softened
Thick fleshy starch noodles coil around the hardest
and most unforgiving parts of me
But my mouth is burnt in the most predictable way,
a naive primal eagerness to digest familiarity
over & over
I hear a laugh from the belly of my mother
She stands watch as this happens for the fourth,
fifth, sixth time
Too many to count
I do not learn
Instead I
return to the hot stinging flood,
the one that singes gummy mouth tissue while my
tongue bathes in the disappointment of it all
like an addict who refuses to come down from the
high
There is just enough broth to remind me of
impermanence
—Nora Tsai
