Second Serving

Lauren Ehrmann and Tiffany Xie

Illustration by Melissa Frateantonio

after Sarah Gambito

Go out into the summer garden barefoot and pick armfuls of ripe tomatoes and fresh basil leaves. Bring them in to your father, who has the pasta boiling and the onion and garlic frying on the stovetop. Wash and hand him the tomatoes, which he chops, and expertly slides into the fragrant onion mix. Add salt, pepper, and oregano. While he washes and tears the basil, grate the parmesan cheese, laughing when he catches you eating it on the sly. Drain the pasta and pile on plates at the kitchen table, heaped with red sauce. Serve to your family with so much parmesan.

My father deserves the warm soil of our house.

Its ghosting doorknobs, the daughters
that are not his daughters.
And yet, we meet there.
The smoke smoking in us.
The silt tilting in us.

Once he took handfuls of soft hazel clay
and slipped my joints together.

I was so sure that
his arms echoed through mine.

Wake and walk downstairs to catch your father rolling rice flour and water into marbles, the dough drying out his hands so that they look powdery. See the balls arrayed on the cutting board. See boiling brown sugar and water on the stove, in the pot where sometimes you make ramen. Carry the cutting board with both hands and push each marble, gently, into the bubbles. Boil until they float. Serve with your favorite ceramic spoon and so much sunlight.