Cinnamon Roll

By Jason Schwartzman

I fucked up, okay, and I ate the whole jumbo-sized cinnamon roll, which was apparently not meant for me — it was meant for Jonny’s brother’s wife who was pregnant and all she was eating those days were jumbo cinnamon rolls, and yes, I was high, which was why I devoured it, gluttonous, ravenous bite by gluttonous, ravenous bite, but no one saw me or so I thought, except Michael did, always Michael who thwarted me like a cartoon villain and everyone said I was DEAD once Steve found out, which he did the next morning when Michael gleefully told him and apparently I’d done something very wrong and I was scolded and every adult at the table looked at me like cinnamon-roll-scarfing was the eighth, deadliest sin and god, I was humiliated, the criminal of the weekend, a monster, but then everyone forgot about it and presumably they bought more cinnamon rolls and it became a funny story I told in college, even a trademark of mine, with someone once even requesting “the cinnamon roll story,” then college ended and a year or so passed and Jonny died in an accident and now the story is about that, and only that, the last time I saw my friend.

Jason Schwartzman is the author of NO ONE YOU KNOW, a resident of Oakland, and a new dad. 

Photo by Jason Thayer.

tourist in my own country

By Jun Chou

an old woman meets my pace as i’m walking along a road in Taiwan (a country where i was born but not where i was raised) and starts speaking to me in Taiwanese (a dialect i’d understand if i stayed but don’t because i didn’t) and right as i am about to politely, pitifully excuse myself, a moped whizzes by and barely knocks us over; as she stabilizes on my forearm i exhale “are you okay” in my broken mandarin and she nods, smiles, and pats my arm gently, shocking in the way it evokes my grandma (who lived and died alone in Taiwan, with whom i communicated primarily in gestures and expressions and touch), and i think of how odd it is for our elders to reassure us (when they are the ones with the frail bodies closer to death) and as i gaze up at all the illegible neon signs above us, i silently mourn this familiar space between feeling like home and feeling like i will never truly belong (anywhere)

Jun Chou is a writer based in Brooklyn.

Art by Jun Chou.

Simmer

By Huina Zheng

Patience, a gentle simmer, no rushing, my mom reminds me in a sacred litany,

bestowing upon me the art of soup-making, more profound than mere culinary skill, a

lesson in embracing slowness in a breakneck world, much like her insistence on

knitting sweaters each winter, defying the lure of store-bought ease, her hands

weaving threads of love, each stitch a testament to maternal affection, echoing an

ancient Tang poem that sings of a mother’s care: “Threads in the hands of a loving

mother, garments on the wandering child, stitching before he leaves, sewn with fears

of a delayed return,” a reminder not to rush, akin to not helping a butterfly from its

cocoon, for without struggle its wings won’t spread or harden, unable to fly, mirroring

the essence of making soup, where turning up the heat to save time is a sacrilege, for

Cantonese soup, unlike in other regions of China, demands a slow cook of four hours,

often a whole day, to achieve the “old fire soup,” a thousand-year-old Guangdong

secret for nourishment, all contained within this pot, and soups hastily boiled

elsewhere are mere shadows.

Huina Zheng, holding a Distinction M.A. in English Studies, serves as a college essay coach and editor at Bewildering Stories, with her stories featured in publications like Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and Midway Journal, earning her two Pushcart Prize nominations and Best of the Net nods, and lives in Guangzhou, China with her family.

Photo by Peiqin Guo.