Turkey Soup
My parents like to take care of me. It’s how they say that they love me.
My dad, especially, says that he loves me every time I leave my home in Pennsylvania to make the journey back to school, piling frozen, homemade meals and discount snacks and leftovers into my arms, lest I somehow waste away in my dorm.
And on the worst of nights, when it is too cold outside or I am too busy or too depressed to find food anywhere else, I remember the tub in my freezer, with its masking tape label in familiar script:
turkey soup
1/18/25.
I defrost the block in the way that I was not quite taught, more so that I absorbed, the way you know anything without really knowing it. The way you know how to fold laundry or your childhood best friend’s phone number, through years of repetition and example, until it’s ingrained in your bones.
I defrost the block in its repurposed plastic yogurt container, submerging it in a pot to loosen the edges. Once it can slide out of its container, I heat it up in the pot on the stove. I watch the block shift and change and liquefy. It has traveled many more miles than your average soup. Sometimes, I worry that it’s time spent traveling—frozen, then thawed, then refrozen—will affect its taste. It never does.
Steam rises from my bowl (I’ve scooped in a generous helping), and it smells like the evening after a snow day, or a late night after musical rehearsal; the prodigal child always returning home. That night, we are sitting around the table, bathed in the soft yellow glow of the living room lamps, holding hands, singing a prayer. The bowl is warm. I am safe.
Here, I stand at my counter. The room is lit by the stovetop light. I don’t know whose dishes are in the sink.
I stand at my counter, eating turkey soup on a cold, cold night, and missing home. But I can hear, in my dad’s voice, a murmur: “I love you.”
Bryn Lister (he/they) is a senior Earth & Environmental Science major at VWU. When he is not writing, you can find him playing board games, listening to music, rock climbing, and pointing out cool birds to his friends. On campus, you can find them at the rock wall in Batten or tutoring at the Learning Center. Their favorite food is soft pretzels from the mall.