I come home to apples
with a word on them.
Mother slices it
in half.
She hands me the word-part--
fu.
I eat the word,
whole,
slowly biting the juicy radical,
swallowing smoothly,
but choking on the dry
phonetic.
Mother nods, knowing I
can’t
move
my mouth
the way she does,
so she lightly pats my back.
She silently crunches through her half,
bruised insides,
wordless
words stuck in between
each hollow crevice.
I take a breath, hastily dive into
crispy firm skin, juicy young flesh,
leaving me,
full
and her,
empty.
fu: 福, meaning prosperity, good-fortune, blessing
The inspiration for this piece came from an apple in Karen Zheng's house that was stamped with the word: 福. From that, Karen explores the language barriers between her and her mother, morphing it with the act of ingesting the word.