I Imagine a Friend Asks me How to Prepare Rice . . . first cycle like so, a current into the water. Grab at it. Still dense rice sinks to the bottom of your vessel. Cup some still, rice in your palm. Press it. You soften the body of the rice, allow owed soft to nest in rice, inside your palm— —and please— —try to sigh while you press— We must remember there is space & this is the time we must steal for us— We must be so firm in love Pha says, as if something cleanses as it smothers; Mak says to bathe rice as if it might break, and it will, its body hard, cracking as you finish your wash— —your vessel will cloud like milk; your vessel needs more water instilled— Tilt and remember being careful with things you hold in hand. Use that hand, once a fist, clenching rice in cycles, now as a cup to catch rice falling out with the milky dirt. . . .you cannot save everyone. This does not matter, if I am only telling you of rice enough to clean & eat & live for yourself. . . You must repeat this for five cycles, and we are in the first. You must be deliberate or you risk forgetting how long you have been cleaning and break the rice. You must still eat though— I am teaching you how to cleanse so you can live through this rice, and you can still eat broken things. Two cups of rice, no matter how broken, will let you live to another day. And what else so you want but to eat to live another day? ? ? and when you starve you eat anything! ! ! Mak says, when I complain for lack of meat or about raw bean sprouts or like I cannot hear privilege from my mouth. In the work camps, a day of work is worth a bowl of rice only the size of a fist given from a fist, Mak says. . . Eat enough to live, her Mak would say passing her fist of rice into Mak’s soft mouth. After some time I see Mak cleaning the small back of Pha’s mother, a woman she did not love, whom she cannot eat to live— —she washes still. . .
