By Lucy Wan
We pull the root,
neatly packaged, from our fridge.
My parents are arguing from
two sides of the kitchen. Heat
rises from a boiling pot.
We bathe the naked root
then cool. Soy sauce, vinegar,
the perfume of sesame
scents the crisp slices
crunching between our teeth
in a foreign kitchen.
Perched on old, lacquered wood,
we crane
to watch two withered hands
wield brush across scroll.
With practiced motion
a leg sinks into the silt,
forming ripples that rock the
green pads cradling
the budding bloom.
Deeper, a fat, speckled koi
darts between new shoots,
their fresh stems anchored
in the cool mud
that clings to our wrinkled hands
searching blindly in the inky
water. Pushing aside the stems–
we pull the root.
Lucy Wan is a senior studying Marketing, Organization Behavior, and Entrepreneurship with a Creative Writing minor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She loves to try ice cream in every city she visits.
