Issue 34

1. You suck and you know it. You will watch Stuck in Love on your laptop that afternoon you were too sad to take a nap. You will fall in love with Lily Collins. You will tell yourself: I think I want to write in English…so people from all over the world will understand me. Haha. No. You will only want that because you wanna be cool.

2. You’re not cool. That’s why all the kids hate you. So you will spend your free time on one of the benches at the forest park, scribbling poems on your composition notebook. You love rhymes. So you will keep making rhymes even though the grammar is off. You will write sonnets about fall – even though you live in the Philippines, for heaven’s sake. You will pen haikus starring leaves. You will curate verses about shiny rocks and flowers kissed by bees. It’s funny how when you will most want to die, you will find life in almost everything.

3. You will dream of getting a poetry book published. You will browse international magazines and press on your three-year-old Samsung phone during Physics. You will think about the reading fee and count how much you’ll need to save each day to make 10 USD by the end of the year. You will walk your way home to school every day, bearing the heat of late afternoon and the worry that your parents might find out–news flash: they will find out. And then you will spend your savings on something stupid like a skater skirt.

4. The summer after your ninth grade, you will send two poems to an online magazine. You wrote them years ago but never dared to take them out of your diary. One day, for some reason you won’t remember when you’re writing a feature article about it, you’ll be brave enough to take that chance. You will write an email, attach the files, then hit send. They will get back to you six months later. Then, you will squeal at the acceptance email and run to your mother: I did it, Mommy! I freaking did it! Loooooook! You will be the happiest you’ve ever been since you were thirteen.

5. You will dream of bigger horizons. You will chase brighter skies. You will turn your trauma into masterpieces and think: Damn! Look at this fine piece of art! (Don’t worry, this one will be addressed in therapy.) You will send out emails in magazines with big names and fancy promises. Months later, they will reply with various arrangements of words to spell rejection. Your Submittable account will resemble a broken stoplight. You will start to believe you’ll never reach your destination. Maybe, you never even left home.

6. In spite of life happening—or maybe because of life happening—every now and then, you’ll be off your rockers and go into a submission spree. You will never get lucky.

7. Somewhere in the middle of the pandemic, your poem about self-harming will be featured in a mental health journal overseas. You will be paid for the very first time. You will buy some ice cream and think of your words printed somewhere in Saskatchewan. While the vanilla melts in your tongue, you will stare outside your windows and whisper: I think I can do this. I think I want this life.
8. You will apply for a writing scholarship offered by a professional poet. By some kind of miracle, you will get in. You will attend Zoom meetings every 7 in the morning in a state of utter disbelief. You will treat every session like a grand occasion. To be fair, it is a grand occasion.

9. You will keep on submitting to magazines hoping for acceptances. The answer will be no or static silence which is, you know, still no, just more brutal. Once, your mother will find you sulking in the darkness of your bedroom and even before she asks anything, you’ll say: Everyone rejected me. She will give you a hotdog on a stick and a cup of hot chocolate. You will ask her to turn the lights off when she leaves.

10. You will wake up one morning and decide to reject your rejections. You will stitch a book of prose and poems out of your failed submissions. You will remember what your kindergarten teacher used to say: you can either find treasures in the trash or make treasures out of it. You will spend the next three months over caffeinated, sleepless, and drunk in the dreams that keep you off the ledge.

11. You will tell yourself you deserve to be heard. You will convince your inner critic you are competent enough to stand on your own. You will think of the child you were and the empty shelves in the library she ran her fingers across and think: someone needs to hear these stories crowding my head. So, like the crazy girl you are, you will self-publish your chapbook. You will put it out online, but that won’t be enough so you will have it on paperback, too.

12. People will pay you for your book. You will pinch yourself so many times. No, you will not wake up. No, you do not want to.

13. You will write for online magazines, journals, blogs – you name it. You will still get rejected. But there will be days when an acceptance email sings its way into your inbox and the stings of the rejection slips go quiet just for a while. You will write truly, madly, deeply. For yourself. For your friends. For strangers. You will write to bury skeletons. You will write to perform exorcisms and resurrections. You will write to escape reality and also to face it. You will twist words into anything you want them to be. You will get paid for this sometimes. You will be able to take your mom out to dinners because of it. You will be tired. You will be sick. You will take your antidepressants and stare at an empty page for the next five months after your diagnosis. When your drive returns, it won’t be in downpours, but in drizzles. You will be thirsty. But you have a kinship with waters. Before you know it, you will be flooded again.

14. You will never stop writing. You will never stop submitting. You will never stop getting rejected no matter where you are in your career. You will be twenty with another collection. You will thank God. You will thank your mother for her genes. You will thank Rad Bradbury for saying that you only fail when you stop writing. You will thank every victory, every fall, every road that brought you here.

15. At twenty-one, you will become a staff writer of the online magazine where you began your journey. You will be working with your favorite author on projects. In fact, you will be mentored by several authors from all over the world and you will wonder why at thirteen, every Friday in that forest park, you ever thought you’d be alone.

16. You will host your first writing workshop for the the youth from different planes of the globe. You will announce your mentorship program. You will break down at 2AM in your hotel room and fall to your knees in gratitude. Again and again, you will thank your angels. Again and again, you will thank your stars. And again and again, you will pick up the pen and go back to a blank page where you began.

17. Hey you, little dreamer. Who loves language the way she wishes she would be loved. Who tears into novels during lectures, lists collocations in another notebook, and searches for the meaning of the words in the dictionary instead of relying on context clues. Who thinks of a thousand ways to say “I love you” and “I’m sad” without actually using those words–because then, what else is poetry for? To the girl who should be in therapy instead of at the forest park every freaking Friday. Who seeks the wisdom of classic writers rather than asking her mom to find her a creative writing teacher. Hey you—yes you—with scars on your wrists, stories under your tongue, and dreams by the tip of your fingers…you will make it. You will save yourself with the lifeline of your verses and you will do the same to others in the future. Just give it time. And yeah, kiddo, your peers don’t like you right now but one day, they will ask for your autograph. So go, just go home.

18. Go home and watch Stuck in Love.

Fransivan MacKenzie is a storyteller born and raised in the Philippines. She is the author of the books “Out of the Woods,” “Departures,” and “i remember that it hurt.” Her works also appeared in Transition Magazine, The Racket, Abandon Journal, CP Quarterly Review, and more literary journals all over the world. In 2023, she became a staff writer for Germ Magazine, the platform that provided her first international exposure. She founded the Fransivan Mackenzie Poetry Mentorship Program to promote literacy while breaking financial barriers.

I always read the news before school. It’s partially because this year in history we’re tested on our knowledge of current events. And partially because I didn’t download the New York Times app for nothing.
The Fantasyland of Miss Universe meets Current Events.

A scathing article mocking the hypocrisy of Miss Universe “empowering” women and attempting to become an event of feminism. It’s worth noting that Donald Trump owned the pageant for nearly nine years.
“And despite the insistence on internationalism, this pageant, like all pageants, is really a festival of uniformity. Virtually every participant is a tall, slim, young woman with long legs, long hair, long (false) eyelashes, perfect(ed) white teeth and precision-sculpted features — all poured into skintight, extremely revealing sequined dresses, atop vertiginous stilettos. The effect is more Rockettes than United Nations.”
I laughed when I read the author’s witty jabs, but they couldn’t mollify the sadness I felt for the rest of the day. We can make fun of the program all we want, but this media blitz sells.
Millions of people tune in to watch women strut around in fantastical costumes while the contestants answer questions about the Ukraine-Russian war. Millions of little girls are mesmerized by the women in revealing unitards, wishing for a transfusion of that confidence. That beauty. That impossible perfection.

In seventh grade I made the mistake of laughing too hard at one of my friends’ jokes. A girl sitting nearby looked at me curiously.
“You know Irena, I never realized this, but I think you have your dad’s nose.”

When my dad was five years old, he tried climbing on top of one of his kitchen cabinets, failed miserably, and fell and broke both his arms and the bridge of his nose. My sister and I used to compare him to Squidward.
I stared at that girl for a second. “That’s nice.”
When I got home from school, I looked at myself really closely in the mirror. She’s wrong. My nose is a little better than my dad’s. It’s not nice, but it’s not comparable to a botched surgery. What would she know; she has fat thighs. But trying to convince myself that my nose wasn’t as bad as my dad’s didn’t take away the sting. That night, I scrawled in my journal:
why would she say that why would she say that why would she say that why would she-

I can laugh at the story now, but I can’t deny that it was her “big nose” comment that propelled my list of insecurities. If I ever came across a genie, I told myself, I would fix me. I’d wish for a smaller waist, smaller thighs, a smaller nose, smaller arms, and at the same time a bigger butt, bigger boobs, bigger eyes. I’d wish for a sharper jawline and angled cheekbones, plump lips and long eyelashes. I’d wish to be pretty. All I wanted was to be pretty.

My older sister’s car jolted to a stop.

“What the fuck are you doing, you psycho, we’re on the highway!” “I know you’re not eating,”
It took me a second to regain my incredulous expression. “What are you even talking about?”
“You skip breakfast everyday, and everyday Melissa sees you at lunch and she says at most you eat an orange, plus at dinner– you barely eat half a serving of everything. I know you’re starving yourself, and I’m gonna tell Mom.”

“Melissa is such a liar, I eat pizza for lunch. And anyway, I always have dance after dinner, so I don’t eat as much but I finish my food after dance.”

“No you don’t- I know you don’t because I saw the food wrapped in the paper towel when I was taking out the garbage.”

“Why are you being so obsessive? I literally eat, ok? Stop being so weird.”

“Irena.” Sonia was almost crying now. “Listen to me. It’s not worth it. You could end up in a hospital. You could die. Please tell me you haven’t lost your period.”

“I haven’t. And I’m not starving myself, you’re so paranoid.”

I hadn’t had my period for five months. Only my journal with daily calorie logs knew the truth:

Monday: 1100 calories, Tuesday: 1500 calories, Wednesday: 865 calories, Thursday:
1305 calories, Friday: 623 calories, Saturday: 1610 calories, Sunday: 1081 calories

Sometimes I wonder what that pale, miserable version of me would think of me now.
She’d probably just say what she thought about herself.

I need bigger boobs, a bigger butt, way bigger eyes. My thighs are too big, my nose is too big, my arms are too big. My jawline should be sharper, my cheekbones more defined. My eyelashes should be longer and my lips need to be bigger. Then I would be pretty.

I know what everyone says.

Beauty is more than one’s external appearance! You need to learn to love yourself! Body Positivity! Don’t indulge in society’s fatphobia! Appreciate your body because it keeps you alive! Stop starving yourself, you’ll just make it worse! Stop! Stop.

But even today, trying to appreciate how I look without achieving societal expectations is harder than achieving societal expectations. It’s too hard. Not when every person I see on social media is perfect. Is pretty. Not when every female character of every TV show I’ve ever watched has been thin and beautiful. And pretty. Not when a woman’s value in this world is almost always reduced to her appearance. She has to be pretty.
But being pretty is impossible. Skinny in some places and curvy in others. Naturally straight hair, but constantly curled and in waves. Eurocentric features with a hint of ethnic genes to enhance them. That weight on the scale, below 115 pounds, never fluctuates. We have to wear makeup, but not so much that it’s noticeable. We have to be perfect little pets: smart enough to maintain a conversation, but not enough to be intimidating. We have to know enough to intelligently answer questions about global politics, yet we are encouraged, actually expected, to prance around in ridiculous costumes while leering eyes rank us. We have these unattainable, contradictory, extensive expectations.

And isn’t it sad that meeting those expectations is all I could want? It’s all any girl could want?

“Women are born with pain built in.”

I put down my spoon and stared at my computer screen. Kristin Scott Thomas’ intent face stared back.

“It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives- men don’t. They [Men] have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world. And yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot and no one cares, but then you’re free, no longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You’re just a person.

Later that night I printed out her speech and added it to the collage on my wall above my bed.

So, maybe it’ll all get better when I’m 65, when I’m free of my period. Maybe then I’ll look in the mirror and think “I’m really pretty.” Hopefully by then I can just, I don’t know, be a person.

“So what’s happened in the news lately?” I raised my hand.

“Miss USA won the Miss Universe competition on Saturday. She had the dumbest costume.”

Irena Kang is sixteen years old, and lives in a small town in Massachusetts. She loves to read— is currently reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and her favorite book is The Bluest Eye. Her favorite author, as well as her biggest inspiration, is Virginia Woolf.

Hong Kong is, first and foremost, a land of stark opposites. Sleek sprawling skyscrapers are silhouetted against the verdant mountainous terrain, bustling night markets are dotted between majestic colonial-era architecture, and the roads are either steep and narrow, little cramped side streets that meander between crumbling apartment complexes, or wide and sprawling, one of the many overlapping highways that act as the veins and arteries of the city. In the heart of the city, juxtaposition is the name of the game.

It isn’t even eight in the morning, and yet, this concept is already on full display. I’d wandered into a rundown side street, the street before me dappled in shadows and covered in puddles, damp from the unidentified liquid leaking out of pipes overhead. Sunlight is a limited commodity, with most of it being blocked out by the laundry dangling overhead, bridging between the different apartment complexes, as the pungent odour of stale trash permeates the air. Despite the lack of sunlight, the buildings are sun-bleached and weathered, yellowed to a muted sepia from the many typhoons and decades they’ve welcomed. Clawing at the sky like wild beasts, the buildings are bursting at the seams from housing so many inhabitants.

In the midst of all the chaos, the lone pop of colour comes from a vibrant blue storefront.

A winding queue snakes all the way to the sapphire-coloured door, as a simple, albeit trendy white font spells out the word “Bakehouse”. The clientele is a mishmash of locals and tourists, residents and expats, all eager to get their hands on the treats being sold within the jewel-toned walls. In front of me, a local teenager plays a game on her phone, idly looking up once in a while to check her progress in the queue. Behind me, a group of three middle-aged tourists discuss the best sights in Hong Kong, with thick Australian accents coating their tongues, adding a distinct curl to their vowels. This bakery is known for excellent sourdough loaves, German pretzels and buttery croissants, but I’m only here for one thing. The quintessential Hong Kong egg tart.

When I finally order and pay for my breakfast, it arrives in a paper bag that is the colour of cut sapphire. The handle of the paper bag is a tangerine orange, and so are the cartoonish line doodles emblazoned on the front. It looks whimsical, effortlessly avante garde in a way that my Design and Technology coursework could only aspire to emulate. However, there’s nothing whimsical about the contents of the box at all. The treats encased within are the picture of tradition, of culture, of Hong Kong’s vibrant heritage.

Glistening Macau-style egg tarts await me, filled with luscious egg custard, the slightly burnt edges caramelised to perfection, the perfect snack of childhood nostalgia. The pastry is buttery and crisp, a nod towards its origins, inspired by British custard tarts and Portuguese pastel de nata. When they were first introduced to Hong Kong in the 1940s, these treats could only be found in high-end Western restaurants, a far cry from their status now, as popular snacks in Chinese bakeries and Cha Chaan Tengs, Hong-Kong style diners. Derived from Colonial recipes, adapted to Hong-Konger tastes, it’s a brilliant metaphor for Hong Kong’s position as an eclectic cultural melting pot, the perfect cultural figurehead, disguised within the folds of a deliciously flaky pastry.

A city of stark contrasts has its own magnetic allure, a certain thrill that accompanies expecting the unexpected. With Google Maps in one hand and the FOMO-fuelled exuberance of a tourist in the other, I never know where my next adventure is going to take me, whether it’s the frigid tundra of an air-conditioned mall, or sublimating in the the sweltering heat, as I take a shortcut through a dingy side alley. There’s something to love about having surprises that lie around every corner, a pleasant change of scenery in comparison to the routine monotony of everyday life, back in my own city.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a fair opinion for me to regard Hong Kong’s infrastructural dichotomy purely through rose tinted glasses. With the city in stark contrast comes a whole host of hidden problems, which I may not fully be able to understand the scope and nuances of, from the viewpoint of a temporary visitor. The polar differences between neighbouring districts speak volumes of growing issues, such as socioeconomic inequality and a growing wealth disparity within the society. It would be incredibly tone-deaf and privileged of me to regard these decrepit buildings as nothing more than an eccentric charm to the cityscape, or praise the unconventional appeal of the ‘grunge aesthetic’ of these buildings, without pausing to consider the lives of the people who live within them.

However, there’s no such thing as a flawless city or country. Hong Kong has a predominantly Southern-Chinese population, and its unique characteristics, as well as the specific issues it faces, stem from Colonialist roots and exponential growth as a global entrepot. As a result, many of these influences have led to these effects being translated across generations, but the vestige of colonisation will fade over time.

I don’t visit Hong Kong often, but when I do, I return to find it being completely different from when I left it, the sight before me usually a far cry from the way it was immortalised in my memories. Perhaps, it’s due to the time spent away, giving me room to grow, resulting in a change in perspective over the years, or perhaps, it’s because Hong Kong is a dynamic city, nimble and quick to constantly reinvent itself. Upon my most recent visit to the city, one thing that was obvious was the way the frenetic, buzzing energy that had died down during the pandemic was slowly but surely returning to the city. Like waking up from a long slumber, life was creeping back in, vibrant hues painting Hong Kong in large, sweeping brush strokes. The returning sensation is a curious, buoyant thing, a spirit that weaves its way around the people of the city, tying them together with an invisible thread.

Although I am half Hong-Konger in ethnicity, I’ve spent my whole life in Singapore, which led to me forging a significantly stronger sense of belonging with the Singaporean facet of my identity. But this trip to Hong Kong surprised me. In spite of the differences, the contrasting architecture, influences and lifestyles, there’s still a deeply rooted feeling of community, bringing together a divided society. After all, the differences lie in the heights of buildings, the depth of pockets, the mother tongues that grace the lips of locals, but these factors aren’t enough to abolish the sense of togetherness within the Hong Kong society, instead only serving to amplify the unwavering sense of belonging.

Even back on Singaporean soil, I can’t help but feel as if I’ve unlocked another part of who I am, a once-forgotten facet of a diverse cultural identity. Even if Cantonese words feel foreign on my tongue, even if I’m more acquainted with the streets of Tanjong Pagar than Tsim Sha Tsui, it can’t change the fact that there’s a hyphen in my passport, there’s another city that I have roots in, distanced but not divided by the South China Sea. Like an egg tart, my identity is a layered, rich thing, paying homage to a plethora of influences, wrapped in one, central shell.

Unlike an egg tart, it took much longer than a trip to a memorable bakery to find it.

Nicola Pak is a sixteen- year-old writer based in Singapore, who loves cooking, chemistry and cats. She enjoys writing think pieces, poetry and YA novels about feisty women in STEM.

“Nǚ ér (Daughter),” Mama whispered, splintering the stillness that enveloped us in our Nissan’s murmur.

“Yeah?” I respond indifferently, double-tapping the gingham dress on my glaring screen.

Mama exhaled a sigh laden with exasperation. “I know you’re only in middle school and college seems far away…But don’t you think it’s time to start preparing? Working harder?”

Add to cart.

My finger twitched as Mama’s tone plunged into despair.

“You can’t continue wasting time like this. Time is water in a sponge, you must squeeze it out. You always have time to study more math. Practice more violin. Professor Yun’s daughters do homework in the car while you dawdle here and there–in the morning, after school, right before bedtime. Also, does anyone spend an entire hour eating dinner like you?”

My eyes swerved away from my phone, flitting through the darkness and anchoring on Mama’s face in the rearview mirror. Vibrant specks of gas station and automobile lights frolicked on her glasses like Skittles. A minor itch of irritation bubbled within me before retreating.

This lecture will pass.

“Everyone is striving while you lag behind for temporary happiness. Angelina’s brother spends hours every day completing hundreds of–”

My ears are bleeding.

“You know what?” I barked out of impulse, my voice pricking with bitter shards that slashed through Mama’s ramble.

“All you–all you Chinese people do is compare, compare, and compare! Compare to this kid, compare to that nine-year-old violin concertmaster, compare to these random Harvard siblings with a tiger mom on the internet. What’s wrong with you?” I shrieked. Leaning forward, I dug my nails into the plush foam of the passenger seat.

“You Chinese people,” Mama reiterated slowly in English, the phrase foreign both in language and context. She fell silent, questioning. Interpreting and tasting each word so innocent on its own, yet monstrous when strung together.

“You? What do you mean, you Chinese people? How could you say that to your mother? To yourself? YOUR BLOOD IS JUST AS CHINESE AS MINE!” Mama rivaled screechingly in Chinese, every syllable firing out like quills, tips seeping outrage.

Or was it grief? Disappointment? Shame?

Lashed by Mama’s acidic reprimand, I felt my cheeks bloom into a boiling crimson under the bite of night frost. I sank back into my seat, unsure if I was quivering from anger or embarrassment.

“It’s really all you do, though. Comparing,” I mumbled.

Maintaining her eyes locked on the inky road, Mama replied softly, “Yes, that’s what we do. It’s Chinese culture. It’s your culture. Don’t you consider yourself part of it?”

***

What is Chinese culture? To me…

It’s a ceaseless torrent of indecipherable math problems hurled at me from the instant my hands grasped a pencil–the time when each chubby finger merely resembled a bulbous pea pod. Despite bawling through one progressively more horrid book after another, I was…

Never enough. Never brilliant enough.

It’s an industrious network of children juxtaposed by parents who scrutinize them like jewelers analyzing sapphires. Calculating, establishing product value through a diligent search for scintillating sparkles and glimmers of distorting blemishes. Ambitious jewelers coveting perfection.

It’s my austere Baba when he chastised me for even the most trivial matters, his wrath erupting at the first twinkle of a betraying tear. Petrified, I squelched sobs ignited by furiously arched eyebrows that magnified his forehead wrinkles–canyons carved by hours of memorizing the Chinese-English dictionary. Hours that acted as the key to Měi Guó (America, The Beautiful Country). Hours that collected into alphabet soup serenading sleepless nights, devouring youthful onyx hair. Seized by my 4-year-old shoulders and marched to face the ever so familiar cream wall, I’d be whacked on my behind before Baba’s storming departure.

It’s drowning in apologetic guilt, yet forever being too proud to utter the three syllables of duì bù qǐ. Pronouncing the last character qǐ–briefly dipping in the middle and jolting up into a risen tone–seems to mimic a defiant question. A statement clumsily declaring, I was wrong, but does that mean you’re right? Saying duì bù qǐ is like forcing a bamboo shoot to squirm out of frozen earth.

Shortly after each timeout, I sat alone on the living room futon that creaked with every hiccup. Sometimes, Baba walked by and ventured closer to sheepishly reveal a cluster of dark chocolate almonds melting in his palm.

A bittersweet apology.

It’s Mama at 9 pm, returning home from a sticky star-studded Texan dusk, a weary smile crinkling her eyes as I flung myself onto her apron and whiffed the canvas cloth saturated in restaurant grease. Clung to her legs as she fingered through the rainbow of homemade bows I shoved into my hair that morning. Licked my lips when she promised to bake red bean rice cake, confectionary magic whisked up during my dreams so that I awoke to glutinous fragrance the next day.

It’s my wài pó (grandma), sweeter than tofu pudding. A wài pó who scrambled to talk with me in every phone call, her local dialect’s perplexing accents cascading out and tickling my ears. Accustomed to only Standard Chinese, I instinctively winced at hearing the unfamiliar tongue–until I grasped a shimmer of recognition.

“Xiǎng Wài Pó le ma (Do you miss Grandma)?”

Wài Pó hushed herself with childlike eagerness, as if my answer to her regularly asked question was a baffling riddle.

“Dāng rán (Of course)!” I’d exclaim in reassurance, hoping Wài Pó could detect my vigorous head nodding. I enjoyed picturing Wài Pó clutching her aged telephone with both small, sun-spotted hands. Once a rich wine red, Wài Pó’s telephone began its life in the 1990s, connecting her and Mama, then a budding entrepreneur in Shanghai. Who knew that Wài Pó would one day sail her love across the Pacific?

“Xiǎng Wài Pó le (She misses her grandma),” Wài Pó would repeat a few times smugly, audibly in glee.

I miss Wài Pó.

I miss my culture.

I miss how, in the three times I met her, she marveled at how much I’d grown, only to still call me a xiǎo bǎobǎo (little treasure baby). I pulled back in shyness when she cuddled her fragile face to mine, giggling moments later as feathery heather gray wisps teased my cheeks.

I miss Wài Pó squeezing every droplet of her affection into the few weeks we’d share in a lifetime. During those days, an ever-changing fruit medley swirled around me as Wài Pó busied herself over skinning apples and rinsing Kyoho grapes she handpicked from nearby fruit stands. Every time Wài Pó caught sight of her outdoor cat, she clambered to hoist it up for me. While I cooed sappily, Wài Pó weathered rounds of swats that swelled into scarlet marks. Sitting on her bamboo mat, as I babbled about Easter egg hunting and slapping mosquitoes under July 4th fireworks, Wài Pó listened intently, immersed in my chaotic Chinese describing America. When I plopped myself at Wài Pó’s wooden table to savor sauteed fern and meatball soup, she observed in delight, her chestnut eyes gently perched on me for the entire meal. Everything tasted better knowing that no one in the world would look at me in the same way Wài Pó did.

Most of all, I miss Wài Pó’s signature platter of Chòu Guì Yú (Stinky Fish), Anhui province’s boasted delicacy that bears a notorious odor symbolical of foot stench. After I endured my first disorienting 15-hour plane ride to China, Wài Pó welcomed me with her Stinky Fish, its malicious stench snaking into and appalling my nostrils. Ironically, the dish was exquisite–adorned with a dynamic array of chilies and ginger slivers, a single grand fish laid cradled in a fiery pool of garnet red sauce. Sandwiching a minuscule morsel of fish between my chopsticks, I nibbled gingerly as the pungent flakes blossomed into a miraculously piquant aroma. Responding to Wài Pó’s expectant peer that flicked between me and her salty peculiar creation, the ends of my lips inched to an awestruck grin.

***

I am clay molded by the hands of Chinese culture. Aged hands that tenderly paint me in Wài Pó’s warmth and phoenixes gracing Mama’s Qipao dress. Rough hands that place me in the kiln’s fiery embrace, as algebra forges a hardened callus on my finger and disciplined scoldings crystallize my heart into jade. Unwavering hands that swash on silky glaze and lift me to the stars as Goddess Cháng é bathes me in moonlight, illuminating love, pride, and resilience. I am whole.

So, perhaps I owe a long overdue word with Mama. D-duì b-

Let me try again.

I’m sorry it took me too long to learn that if I cherry-picked my culture, what’s left behind is bland, like naked wontons without the scorch of chili oil.

And, to my beloved Stinky Fish, unleashing your tear-jerking curls of putrid steam, how does forgiveness sound?

Grace Huang is a junior at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin. She loves writing about childhood and the Asian-American experience. Her work has been published in the New York Times and recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Wisconsin Young Writers Award, and the Ringling College of Art and Design. She has two cats who enjoy hogging the keyboard of her overheated laptop as she types up daydreams.