Ama

Ama cooks with a pot missing a handle

Mixing juicy sausages into sticky mushroom rice

Wrapping fragile dumpling skins delicately into fans

Folding fish balls and turnips into a watery soup

Ama wears red lipstick to church on Sunday mornings 

Comes home and cuts off the best part of the mango

Into perfectly shiny cubes for me

Cherry pigment smearing on the tough fruit fibers

Ama wears bright yellow pants to the supermarket

Hosing down the blossom tree blooming with ripe plums

She whispers that there is an angel three feet above my head

A guardian of accountability, dissecting my every move

Ama never complains about her fingers

But when the soup starts boiling and she can’t see

Her hand grazes the metal pot and flinches in pain

Tomorrow she’ll wear gloves so no one will know

Ama has never said I love you

But with every brown scar on her hand

Every soft wisp of graying hair

She tells me that she does

Emelia Yang

(she / her)