Moon Cakes
by Erin Jamieson
Mother places red date paste inside anemic, tender pastry dough, packing it as tightly as possible. The way she packs for trips overseas, as if afraid to leave even a little something behind. A single egg, salted, is placed in the center, covered, just as moonlight streams through our living room window.
Tomorrow, this beautiful cake will be sliced, given away to neighbors who don’t understand its significance, divided until it’s impossible to remember what it was.
For now, Mother feeds me scraps of leftover dough, sprinkled with cinnamon and anise, sweet and spicy and hot. The scents tingle my throat just as it did when I was young, when I believed I could be closer to the stars by eating this delicacy.
Mother makes lotus green tea with honey, checking the moon cake, tending the boiling water, silver speckling the same bob haircut she had when I was learning to drive, decades ago. The same haircut that I used to be embarrassed of, the same puckered jeans I secretly wished she would throw out.
I’ll bake moon cakes for your wedding, she told me when I was in my 20’s. As if this is what I asked for, as if me getting married was inevitable.
In a year, I’ll be 35. By now, per her timeline, I should have had kids, a home. I eat another bite of dough, the spices overwhelming my nose. As if my diet of microwaves pasta and my solo days working remotely from a studio apartment has made anything short of bland feel overwhelming, oppressive.
I open the blinds to a misty, autumn night. In past years, Mother chided me: You can’t have kids after a certain age. Do you really want to end up alone?
Now, she is oddly quiet, as we sit side by side, sipping tea, eating pieces of now-cooling dough.
“The moon is so bright tonight,” she says. In the same careful tone she’s adopted after Father passed two years ago.
“It is,” I say.
She reaches for my hand, and, this time, I don’t pull away.
Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the author of a poetry collection (Clothesline, NiftyLit, Feb 2023). Her latest poetry chapbook, Fairytales, is available from Bottlecap Press. Twitter: @erin_simmer