On a Sunday, I watch orange permeate the sky while my 18-month-old rhythmically caps, uncaps a pen, draws, and repeats. “Yellow,” I murmur. “Blue,” she responds. It occurs to me how even when our bodies press against each other with cellular remnants of the same umbilical cord, my nipple in her mouth, we are essentially unknowable to one another, separated by boundaries of our skin. I remember the secret journals filled with all that made me different from whom my family needed me to be. Yet here is my daughter, freely sharing who she is, one mark at a time.
Xinran Maria Xiang is a first-generation immigrant, mother, physician, and writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Defenestration, and Glint Literary Journal. Instagram: @xiangwriting