How to Talk to a Baby Gorilla By Claire Kim ~ W I N N E R O F T H E PA R A L L A X AWA R D ~
1. Take a trip to your mother’s house. Greet your ma, umma, who is watering the cherry tomatoes in the backyard. When she returns to the house, her hands full of enoki mushrooms, unpack your bags full of soft tofu, three ounces of pork, and minced garlic that you prepared last night before she slices the green onions as a speck of silent legacy clings to your ears. Before the stew gets cold, pour it inside a steel bottle, steam hugging your cheeks, and prepare two metal spoons, bowls of purple rice, leftover holiday napkins, and origami stars. Wrap them all up with her embroidered bojagi, a wrapping cloth. Pocket your train ticket inside your autumn jacket and hold a kite in your hand as you enter the nearest forest. 2. Be patient. Stand in the forest, the biggest world. Wait for the baby gorilla, baby Gee, who spots your kite from a distance. When baby Gee arrives, open your arms towards him like the branches of root fingers inside the soil and rub his back five times. Share umma’s spicy tofu stew with him underneath the universal flower, the sun. Listen to his mushroom munchings as she did to your younger self. 3. Practice warmth. Say E-hate-yo-yoo, e-hate-yo-yoo, meaning I love you, your lifelong language with umma, and together, observe the forest with baby Gee and fall silent. Notice the way baby Gee leans against you as you preserve your roots in memory pots. Sprouting the sound of grace, mothering the sound of you.
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