On winter mornings, she plucks
the red-rimmed box mix
and stamps its torn cardboard
with a thumbprint of oil,
cracks the wobble
out of two eggs and pours
water from a cup thick
as my father’s glasses.
With one arm, she hugs
the ribbed bowl, as her other spins
dust into ribboned gold,
holding her breath
in case the mixer swallows
the air in the house,
and us along with it.
The vinyl floors exhale
in the shape of her bare feet
and she slides the tin into the oven
like it’s a mailbox, her mittened hands
pushing another letter to my father.
Except these return sooner
and sweeter. The sponge yawns
vanilla into the air, onto
our tongues, a pillow
and shield, a flavor
I yearn for years later, alone
one morning in an empty
apartment, the cold glass
fogging as I raise it to my lips.
But we had leftover sadness, so I said we should make flan.
What a flat name for an already sad dessert,
its chance at flair baked away, into a jiggle.
The recipe called for six eggs plus two yolks, meaning
six heartbreaks, plus two more of the core
that is worse for your heart than your tongue.
This was the Spanish version, the Iberian flan, calling
for Old World whole milk and an American amount of sugar.
So we quartered it. Why not. Baking is not about precision—
it is about attention, cracked then blended—a tension
held then dissolved: crystals into caramel, yolk
and albumen, unbaked bubbles, gasping and broken,
like sadness. Sadness can be beaten then folded.
Some say to cream it with sugar, or separate
its strands and whip its clarity into stiff peaks.
But flan should be smooth, so we sieved the whole sadness
through metal mesh, its last tears lapsing into liquid,
into the coated loaf pan. All of it, into the oven.
fathom (verb, transitive): to encircle with extended arms —Oxford English Dictionary
Like cutting a watermelon
alone with a dull knife.
In Mandarin, we call it killing:
“After dinner, I will kill the watermelon.”
Bless this skeleton
of cranial bones, broken
in thinned blood,
transfusing the wood, cubes
of flesh like soaked foam,
thrown into the glass.
In English, I could say, “This watermelon
is almost unfathomable,” its ellipse
eclipsing my arms. I cannot steady
its halves, my knife too blunt
to make a clean cut. Like driving
alone at night for the first time.
My hands grip the rib
of steering wheel, my breath
the marrow. Taillights spot
the road, clot at each stop.
Each second’s edge is sharp
as smashed glass, thin as cut metal.
No one taught me the number
of prayers it takes to get home,
how high to count until the cutting
board bears only rind.
Winshen Liu learned how to play mahjong late in life compared to her cousins and still can’t find the Big Dipper, even though she loves stargazing. Her chapbook, Paper Money, was selected by Diane Seuss in the 2024 Adrift Chapbook Contest at Driftwood Press. She is grateful to the de Groot Foundation for supporting her poetry. In addition to writing, she loves long-distance train travel, baking and bakeries, and stickers.
