"pulling the shoots" by Maya Linsley

I fall in love with her while my fingers are over hers, two pointer-thumb duets pinching a little wavy ridge across the top of a dumpling. 恭喜發財 is what the words look like. She says them wrong.

(I already fell in love with her once, but it’s this: the reverence in her hands, her genuine curiosity, the way I feel—for once—as though I’m authorized to speak on behalf of myself. Authorized by a white woman? I won’t think too hard about that one, not now or probably ever).

After five hours of this I’m too exhausted to get drunk or even to fuck, but on a regular night I would’ve spent ten minutes on the ropes alone, just making sure she’s not lying to me when she says it doesn’t hurt. Even with permission, I’m afraid. I’m going to hell and when I get there I’ll think about how she felt. Fantasizing. Quoting a childhood book of old Chinese sayings to myself when I sleep, fluent in dreams even though I haven’t spoken Cantonese properly since I was in diapers. She’s 揠苗助长 . (I don’t usually forget that one).

I burned the inside of my forearm a few times while I was frying dumplings for her on New Year’s, watching her sidelong, her fingers plunging across the ridge. Later she takes my chopsticks and puts dumplings in my mouth, the way I want to put my own fingers in my mouth after I’ve touched her. She is divine, goddess of the moon, inhaling my skin like a ridge of twice-formed dumpling frills, pulling me home in a cloud of cheap oil-grease-smoke as though it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done.