is when you wake up, drenched in sweat from a nightmare, because you heard Ma, voice dissolving between stretches of thunder, whispering that the rain outside was God's tears, and you feel them flow down your face too, spilling onto the silk-like carpet, the liquid mixing with the shadows of what is under your bed, so you force yourself out, into the rain, so your body can understand the water better, the pitter-pattering of feet, the pulsing of the ripples about to burst, and the rain that soaks your hair feels like a second baptism. 

now, you’re the one who is drowning but you don’t realize how much you are holding on, if you understood, you would tuck yourself back inside, continue the game of hide and seek, and only sometimes ask: who's there? but you had to believe in Ma's stories of goats escaping from their cages, children being given to the sky, then lining up against confession booths with a handbook nailed to their chest, listen. her voice is coming back in uneven fragments, nothing else. 

so you pray to remember her face again or at least the shape of her hand around yours.

The first hint of you drifts into the hallway before I realize I am remembering a long-lost memory. It is sweet, but only for a moment. I stop where I am and listen to the house, to the small corners where warmth gathers along the walls. Food, people say, can be hot or cold not only because of temperature, but because of the feeling it leaves inside the body. Before I even reach the kitchen, I already feel the 火气 rising in me, that internal heat made from steam, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, and sugar. It presses its palms against my organs, leaving faint marks that cannot be washed away or forgotten.

The pot opens with a mouth of its own. It spills out the recipe you never taught me, each smell arriving like a word I should have learned earlier. I try to follow what is left of you through instinct: the darkening sauce, the softened meat, the sweetness balancing against salt. I want to cook for someone who can no longer sit at the table. Still, the bowl fills anyway, heavy with slow-cooked 红烧肉, tender enough that its connective tissue melts into gelatin. The scent rises past the porcelain, past the borders of the lazy susan, and moves through the room with a dancing gentleness.

Sometimes, I pause and look around the kitchen, noticing what hasn't changed. The watermark above the stove, the spoon resting at its familiar angle in the drawer. The window let in the same light as always, falling across the same counter where your hands once moved without hesitation. I remember these details the way you remembered the recipes, without writing them down, until one day I simply knew them, the way you know your own name. Standing here, I understand that I have been learning from you by simply being in the places you once stood. 

For a second, I turn my head, believing you have walked in. I imagine your hands, your voice, the way you might correct the dish without saying I have failed. But the kitchen stays empty, and the food remains. So I sit with the bowl in front of me, understanding that this is what inheritance can look like: not a recipe, but a hunger, an aroma, a warmth that keeps returning to the body long after the person who made it is gone.

Translation:

火气 - huo qi - literally, fire air, but refers to the body's internal heat

红烧肉 - hong shao rou - a famous Shanghainese braised pork belly dish

Ma always said the rain was God's tears.

Rain spattered against the window. He crouched against the windowsill, tracing the raindrops tumbling down the glass. He had curled up here with his mother once.

“We have to cheer Him up,” she had said. 

Rain poured from his eyes, drowning his socks, his faith, his breath. 

He had always believed in God, always believed in his mother's stories of goats escaping from their cages and children being given to the sky. 

Today, he didn't mind if God was upset: At least He has Ma.