a vision of glass noodle strings with carrots hair bathed in soy a tightly rolled rice paper wrapper stuffed cheeks of shrimp and pork the nanny who tended your son's fevers that foreign summer the surgeon dark and only five foot tall who took out the burst appendix the echo of always cleaning doing laundry singing smiling teeming some believe the afterlife a place of punishment or reward some believe we'll be reborn as many times as we couldn't perfect our past lives ruthless skin unbroken teeth voice for a gilded screen