When you give a body too much love it
bursts. I learned that from women making dumplings.
They mixed minced meat and cut cabbages,
scooped a spoon and placed it in the center of a
rolled-out dough. Then a weathered palm
wrapped around my hand as I wrapped
the skin around the meat, shaping and molding and
pinching, imprinting a signature.
They do not have names but leave behind
fingerprints in my stomach.
Skin always covers the meat
I like to watch raw dumplings plunge into
hot water. They bubble and boil and bob up and down,
turn sideways and stumble over each other, and burst
when they are in the pot for too long. Meat
exposed and skin shredded. A perfect body now
swelling and oozing soup.
Skin should always cover the meat
I bit into glossy white dumplings and thought of how easy it is to
break soft skin. One whiplash and it splits
open, slits ripping, skin
should always cover the meat or everything spills
out of the body, can’t scoop it back or pinch it close,
a puddle of uncontained love pooling at my feet.
But I am bent and pressed by fingertips all over.
What’s left after bodies burst, bodies mend and grow.