love letter to a chinese buffet

ed shen & josie wu

i imagine myself falling in love with the chef 

who delivers pork buns on a wheeled cart 

in a dim sum house. i imagine myself boiling my tongue 

in tea, chrysanthemum-flavored, as if remembering 

something beautiful called pain. pain akin to pink, 

a person’s stomach blooming out of its own 

ignorance. i imagine myself gathered around 

palmfuls of shu mai, 

chicken feet, 

my father’s anger. 

he speaks english to the chef i have fallen 

in love with even though it is no one’s first language 

except for mine. the chef can tell i’m a foreigner 

in my own mouth, how grief saddles my tongue. 

how grief is an american concept because 

it sits where it can’t fit. i think of the way 

we used to count grief: slowly, and then all at once, 

as if savoring a first bite. and now, remembering

how you taught me how 

to read the menu on my own,

and how loss sounds the most hollow 

in a dim sum house, table for two.

i imagine life for the dim sum man 

as he weaves his cart between tables,

serving a part of himself with

each plate of braised pork

the beating chaos of voices yelling, 

the clatter of plates stacked tall, 

and children running made a rhythm 

that i did not recognize, 

i imagine myself at the edge of a dance 

of beautiful blades, in perfect synchrony,

and felt them pierce my lungs as if trying to 

show me how to breathe in my own home. 

we used to point and nod, in silence, 

as if saying a word would be surrender

you waved down the man wheeling the cart 

after you made me repeat after you

the wheels reversed and it was like

i was at the prom again, waiting for our song to come on.

the dim sum man gestured widely to me, 

slowly as if to ask a question, daring me to answer. 

my father asks for the bill in their mother tongue, 

and i think of the way your stories carried me, 

and how you made your mistakes mine

how joy blossomed in my stomach 

and spun me in that intimate groove

how you filled the scars on my tongue with familiar sounds 

and watched as I danced my first dance with the dim sum man

what’s lost can be found

chopsticks clink on porcelain

love found in dim sum