I remember those nights when my mother made potstickers for dinner, an event that in my young mind was the pinnacle of transcendence, even eroticism. As the sunlight waned to gray in our kitchen window, my mother spent hours folding potstickers under my close supervision—I did not help her yet felt that my presence was paramount, that if I for some reason did not stay close then the potstickers might never appear. My little body squirmed at the edge of the kitchen counter, eying that trembling stack of potstickers, which grew one by one as my mother folded them with steady hands, waiting demurely on blue foam containers for their turn to be on the hot pan on the stove. How I loved the shape of them—the fat boats made of dough, so prim yet sensual within their rigid pleating like women tucked into corsets, so soft and smooth when raw, but which when cooked in the pan, turned solid and firm, their fleshy bodies billowing like lungs, breathing in and out as they expanded and caved from the heat of the stove. Once my mother deemed the potstickers sufficiently golden, she would take them one-by-one off of the pan, where they formed pyramids atop sensible plates with tiny blue flowers braided around the smooth edges. Then came dinner. At night my family usually prayed, and so it was during potsticker night, but unlike other dinners, one of my eyes remained open to ensure that no one in my family might secretly kidnap one. Once the prayer from my father’s mouth had ceased, I would hurriedly transport a potsticker to my own plate as if I were a thief whisking away a stolen bride from a palace as the sun rose with its golden rays of truth above the horizon. There on the plate, I inserted my chopsticks into the potsticker with great care, puncturing the skin with the wooden tips, and I carried to my lips the desecrated thing and tore the tiniest bit off. Then I set the entire potsticker back down, before inserting my chopsticks into the center as if performing a microscopic, delicate surgery on the potsticker’s still beating heart. In one swoop, I tugged the center of meat out and placed it onto my tongue, chewing the salty lump, feeling the moistness of the onions that my mother minced in order to achieve the perfect tender texture. But I ate quickly, despite knowing her effort, for I was impatient to get to the treasure I truly wanted. The meat, although the most expensive and plump part, was the perfect precursor, being delicious and yet not exactly what I desired, for it was slightly too robust and too chewy for my young tastes. Once the meat was gone, I could turn to the potsticker skin, a storebought thin slice of dough that nonetheless was my favorite part, for it was delicate and soft while being crisp at the edges, as if it were both a blanket for my mouth as well as the bed on which the blanket lay, providing structure and depth as well as softness. The juices of the meat still clung to the dough and left its silky flavor in all the crevices. With my chopsticks I brought my potsticker skin to my mouth and placed it on my tongue, where a feverish joy bubbled to the surface of my skin, created by a movement from deep within me, similar to how I’d felt as a young child when, at my demands, my mother hoisted me up and threw me into the air so I could fly. Now, I had no choice but to acquiesce to that same urge for motion. I leapt off of my chair and danced with abandon, surrounded in all directions by a whirlwind of oil and dough and salt, feeling my mother’s ghostly hands lift me once more into the air. My mother, upon seeing my fit of passion, merely laughed and placed another potsticker on my plate, while I continued in my quivering and shaking in silence, as if I were a monk experiencing ecstasy from my deity for the first time, cleansed of raw earthly desire and now finally intuiting what true union felt like with the divine. At last, energy spent, I slid back onto my seat, shoulders hunched. There I began the process once again, compelled in equal parts by pleasure and devotion and the curiosity of whether the wonder might fade, which it never did, for each of my mother’s potstickers was so transcendent, so perfectly cooked, so much its own little universe of aroma and sensation.

Kristine Chang is a Chinese-American writer based in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Panorama, Full House Literary, Sine Theta Magazine, and the San Diego Zine Festival. She is 2026 Rooted and Written Fellow.