Lucy Zhang

Lacto-Fermentation

Survival of the fittest is how I learn it. I fight evil off with salt. Sugar converts to lactic acid, lactic acid inhibits everything else. The sourer, the better, and somehow that’s going to make us live longer, down a foggy road cradled by mountains, mist and humidity masking yellow lane markings, I head for the sky. I pickle beets and turnips and cabbage, thinking my gut flora could digest all the rocks and jade bangles that tumbled down my esophagus while I was distracted: jade makes you immortal, not sure about the rocks. Why couldn’t an umeboshi have been pressed into my mouth instead of a stone, like I’m opened for breakfast rather than being buried with the remains harvested from a jewelry box? Grow up strong, a thought I gulp down, choke back the gag reflex as I submerge silken tofu in kimchi and red miso, top with green specks of scallion, let simmer until the soybean’s off-white takes on an orange and the soup boils crimson. Is this living? Blazing forward, incinerating bacteria, leaving the green as ash swept up by the roadside, not that jade melts, though I’d not call it alive.

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Lucy Zhang writes, codes and watches anime. Her work has appeared in The Boiler, The Hunger, Fractured Lit and elsewhere. She is a finalist in Best of the Net 2020 and included in Best Microfiction 2021. She edits for Barren Magazine, Heavy Feather Review and Pithead Chapel. Find her at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.