Hotpot Fridays
The aroma steams us as the rice noodles soak
in a broth bath of miso, soy sauce, bay leaves,
chili oil. The spiced stock simmers and smokes:
wilts cut carrots, bok choy, slivered sleeves
of scallions. We wait in hovering heat. You prepare
the radish for pickling, dead the head of the napa
cabbage: let its cold body bloom in the shared,
seething pot. We are starved as raw scraps of
oyster mushrooms plunge then float in a whirl
of bubbled pulses. Last is to strip the onions
peel back layers to reveal the hypnotic swirls
of their fleshed bulbs. They drop in, and it’s done,
so we diminish the heat, salivate at the hot broth.
You blow, ladle with hands so ravenous, so soft.
Brittany Atkinson is an MFA graduate from Western Washington University. Her work can be found in Barren Magazine, Rust & Moth, The Shore, and other places. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys roller skating, thrifting and drinking vanilla oat milk lattes. She currently works as a tutor.