By Ally Huang, aged 16

the chocolate fondue is a little bitter tonight. i tell my mom

and she tells me she made it from seventy percent cocoa.

 

i want to complain, but the bitter taste lingers as i watch news

events from a couch in a house in a safe street in a nice

 

suburb, from the highest vantage point — privilege.

my seven-year-old feet trespass on convection currents,

 

the asian and european twister dots falling beneath my steps,

careful to never stray too far from the red & white & blue.

 

swiss mountain air floods my brain. fruit by the foot rolls

off my tongue. trams crisscross my veins.

 

five ancient bridges, four city gates, three official

languages, two international schools,

 

one yellow girl. the blue unravels —

the fondue pot sits & swirls

 

on the dinner table. i dip a chunk of white bread

into white cheesy goodness and try not to think

 

about how this white surrounds my life. i spear

my asianness with a three-pronged fondue fork, burn it

 

on the stove that cooks zhajiang noodles & dumplings,

and shove every last piece so far down my throat that

 

they will have to claw open my overflowing stomach to find

it. there is room inside for whiteness but there is no room inside

 

for tiny chink eyes, oily black strands, sickly skin, and a brain

teeming with addition and subtraction. there is no

 

room inside for a girl who cannot do a school presentation on the

topic of christmas because it is not part of her ancestral culture.

 

i scrub my tongue each night trying to forget, forget, forget

the flavors. no matter how many times i try to cleanse, i never

 

stray & never abandon. the tang of xiaolongbao & spring rolls

& sour prunes sticks to my sweaty skin in humid air.

 

now i am seated in a small apartment in a bustling city.

chinese hotpot — chinese fondue — sits in the center

 

of the table, a steaming pot bringing together

family the same way it brings together lettuce,

 

beef slices & noodles. the broth is as thick as

melted chocolate & melted cheese & a melted childhood.

 

the fondue holds this mixture-chasm of american & swiss

& chinese. until it boils over. for the first time,

 

i refuse to forget, forget, forget my own flavors. i want to

release them as fireworks on chinese new year, shout my

 

asianness so loud from the rooftops that it drowns beijing

traffic & freezes the twister spinner & illuminates the night.

 

i take it all — my skin, my language, my eyes, my soul, my

stomach, my wit, my heart — and throw it into the melting pot.