. . . first cycle like so,
a current into the water.
Grab at it. Still dense
rice sinks to the bottom
of your vessel. Cup some still,
rice in your palm. Press it.
You soften the body
of the rice, allow owed
soft to nest in rice,
inside your palm—and please

—try to sigh while you press.
We must remember there is space &
this is the time we must steal
for us—

. . . We must be so firm in love
Pha says, as if something
cleanses as it smothers;
Mak says to bathe rice
as if it might break, and it will,
its body hard, cracking as you
finish your wash—

—your vessel will cloud
like milk; your vessel needs
more water instilled—

Tilt and remember being
careful with things you hold
in hand. Use that hand,
once a fist, clenching rice
in cycles, now as a cup
to catch rice falling
out with the milky dirt.

. . .you cannot save everyone.
This does not matter, if I am
only telling you of rice enough
to clean & eat & live for yourself. . .

You must repeat this for five cycles,
and we are in the first.
You must be deliberate or you risk forgetting
how long you have been cleaning
and break the rice.

You must still eat though—
I am teaching you how to cleanse
so you can live through this rice,
and you can still eat
broken things.

Two cups of rice, no matter
how broken, will let you live
to another day.

And what else so you want
but to eat to live another day? ? ?
and when you starve you eat anything! ! !
Mak says, when I complain
for lack of meat or about raw bean sprouts or
like I cannot hear privilege from my mouth.

In the work camps,
a day of work is worth
a bowl of rice only
the size of a fist
given from a fist,
Mak says. . .

Eat enough to live,
her Mak would say
passing her fist of rice
into Mak’s soft mouth.

After some time

I see Mak cleaning
the small back of Pha’s mother,
a woman she did not love, whom
she cannot eat to live—

—she washes still. . .