Life's Soup

My mother cut a piece of meat from her arm. Tears poured from her face and blood spilled on the floor.

My mother took her flesh and put it in the soup. She cooked magic in the ancient tradition  to cure her mother one last time.

-Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

Mother - your mother did it

properly and planted her

second heart in her

first born. Why you chose

to skip my sister, your first born,

fortune favored, star guided,

sloth whisperer, I’ll never know.

Instead I look inside

my chest and see that I

am you and your mother

before you. And I fought

it and yelled with all

my breath to create

my own voice from your

loaned lungs, but you

can always out scream

me and so we battle

for dominance, the wet

and the dry seasons,

typhoon and drought at

war yet always the same results

from opposing ends.

How can you ask me to cut

out the meat of my forearm

bath it in broth and feed it to you

after all this? After you bred

me to be your enemy, after

you beat me out me and painted

your face over mine, war paint

to warn the world that your life

will breathe on after your body

decays. You want the life saving

soup of the body you made to

replace your own, but I say

to you now in your own voice:

Get up, old woman,

this is not your deathbed yet.