thanksgiving leftovers

by Megan Peng, Torrey Pines High School '22 October 6, 2021

"They/them" by Angelina Ochoa, Canyon Crest Academy '22

today we make turkey vegetable soup (today we eat our way into being american)

start with the broth, mom tells me, scrape the brown stuff, put the turkey bones in the pot

i hate these american soup herbs, she says, dropping rosemary and thyme stems into the bubbles

it’s the same thing as 꼬리탕 (korean oxtail soup) but with all this creamy fluff — and so much salt!

later, she fishes out the leaves and onion bits with chopsticks, brings the wooden spoon to her lips

she squints in approval or disgust, she reaches for string beans zucchini tomatoes shiitake

no milk and flour! get the coconut milk and shake it (hard — no — harder)

(you know, this isn’t so different from the soup my mom used to make when i was sick)

finally, spinach (you washed it, right? we can’t trust the store to get all the worms out)

i grab fistfuls of freshly soaked leaves and dump them in the soup forgetting to shake off the excess water

now we wait. (but you didn’t even use a recipe, how can you be sure?

hah! you know americans never follow the rules anyway) (we aren’t american, ma)

she lifts the lid with averted eyes, takes in the steam slightly, remembers the things that never happened

(how do you remember things that never happened?) (with a smile, relaxing your muscles)

we ladle the creamy broth into a floral porcelain bowl and fill the grinder with peppercorn (more, more —

we won’t be able to taste the soup! — we hate turkey anyway, just give us more)

we cautiously raise the bowl to our lips, wincing slightly with the first searing gulp

it’s not terrible (it’s missing something) it fills me with cowardly sad sweetness

we need white kimchi, the sour one, without the red spiciness (she used to call it 우유김치, milk kimchi

the korean waitress laughed at me when i asked for it — don’t you mean 백김치, baek-kimchi?)

today we ate the american into korean (it would’ve tasted better if we used oxtail instead of turkey)

(but they eat turkey on thanksgiving, not oxtail; their holiday, their rules) (there are no rules here) (for us there are)