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Inside Out

We light our cigarettes, inhaling, Then, sitting across the table from you, I'm a small child admiring my radiant, beautiful, beautiful, mother. In your slim black dress black black as your jet black hair black as your coal black laughing eyes, your scattered Chinese words echo round and round my head and I hear my mother's voice, a young woman, strong and sure. We gossip over beer and blow out smoke, coolly as we discuss our plans for a decadent month in Taipei and how we mean to turn the city upside down. In the land of your childhood, your native land, I'll be the ABC not knowing the language or the street. On the surface, we are the same: two Asian women sitting in a Berkeley cafe. But woman, sometimes you turn me inside out. Juliana Chang

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