How to Make Wontons

By Carol Young

Open your hand like this.

		I will pretend my mother means open your heart.

Place the store-bought wonton skin in your palm.

		She and I never talked about our skin.

Drop a small spoonful of raw ground pork and shrimp filling on the dumpling skin.

		I feel raw today because she cannot make wontons anymore.

Turn the spoon around and dip the handle edge into the scrambled egg and brush around the meat. The egg wash is the glue for the wonton.

		The unsaid is what glues us. Mother to daughter, daughter to 
                mother, daughter to daughter, mother to mother.

Fold the skin and make a triangle. Press the edges.

		Triangle: I press my daughter to me. I press myself to my mother. 

Take two points of the triangle, egg wash the tops, and twist like so. That’s what she would tell me. Just mix like this. Fold like this. Twist like this. Cook like this. 

		This is how she said I love you.       I say I love you out loud to her 
                and to her.

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Carol Young is a Chinese-American writer born in San Antonio, Texas and who works in the music business including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. SWWIM Every Day is Carol's debut poetry publication. Carol's work is forthcoming in the January/February 2024 issue of West Trestle Review and “Just Say It” was published in The New York Times (Tiny Love Stories 2021). Carol is an MFA candidate at Pacific University and an Anaphora Arts fellow.

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