- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
I Turn Twenty-Four and Fold Lumpiang Shanghai Alone for the First Time
The body takes over: I mix the pork-beef filling with my hands.
I know the way to do this involves a little sacrifice. As a child,
I watched my mother knead the fragrant mixture in a large silver bowl.
The only help she asked of me: to peel the paper- translucent wrapper
onto a plate. Sometimes the delicate sheets tore in my fingers:
that is how I learned to be gentle and perfect. But at twenty-four,
I no longer call home. I don’t want to know what ingredients
I am missing. I defy the unrecorded recipe, add the white ends
of green onion, unwashed cilantro just for me. I knead hard
against the sides of an old yogurt container, not a bowl,
the mixture sweating from the desperate heat of my hands.
I know our family in the Philippines celebrates all our birthdays
with sweet singing, sweet spaghetti, noodles long as life. My family
in Georgia wonders if this winter I’ll want to come home. No one
can see how dutifully I remember each step, how I seal
the eggrolls tight like a bundle of letters I promise to send.
NOREEN OCAMPO is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. She is the author of two chapbooks, including There Are No Filipinos in Mississippi (Porkbelly Press, 2025) and Not Flowers (Variant Literature, 2022). Her work can also be found in The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi.