6/12/25 Fish

Shikin Xu
Dec 6, 2025
10 min read

Back in Rio.

Saturday morning feels pretty quiet.

It’s a little after eight; I woke up sometime past seven. I didn’t get up right away, just stayed in bed for a while, feeling my body. No thinking, just sensing.

Only when my body started saying, “I’m a bit thirsty,” and “I kinda need the bathroom,” did I slowly sit up and actually begin the day.

At ten I have a Pilates class.

A new speciality coffee shop just opened next to the yoga studio, and they’re doing a little collaboration: if you go to this Pilates class, you get a free cup of coffee.

Jaja, there’s no way I’m missing that.

Yesterday I didn’t really have time to sit down and write, most of the day I was on the move. In the morning I went into downtown Saquarema to pick up two pieces of clothing I’d left at a little sewing shop to be mended. I kept getting lost on the way there, circling around a few times and taking much longer than I thought I would. I was planning to take the 3:50 bus, but only arrived at the station at 4:15. Luckily, I still managed to buy the very last ticket for the 4:30 bus. I quietly told myself: lucky me.

After getting back to Rio, I went to Laranjeiras to see an apartment. I’ll move there on the 19th. My future flatmate is a pretty quiet Spanish guy. The apartment feels warm and homey, with really good airflow, a big kitchen, and it’s nice and peaceful. The moment I walked into that space, I felt my body settle a little.

When I got home, I freshened up a bit and then messaged my new friend Irati:“Do you want to go to Mirante do Pedrão to listen to samba?”

She said yes.

We met on a hike, and we always joke that we’re trauma bonding sisters.

That day we were climbing Pedra da Gávea, and there were two really steep sections where it ended up being just the two of us, no harness, no rope, just our hands on the rock, both of us a little scared inside.

I’d brought two bottles of water and almost nothing to eat; she had two sandwiches and one bottle of water that disappeared pretty fast. She gave me one of her sandwiches, and I gave her my extra bottle of water. In that simple exchange, sharing food, sharing water, cheering each other on, we made it through the whole hike together.

When we got to Mirante do Pedrão, I actually felt pretty uncomfortable at first. There were so many people, it was crowded, and the air was full of cigarette smoke, it really got on my nerves. Eventually we moved to a spot with more airflow, where we could see the night view and the moon. It was quieter there, so we just sat down and started talking.

She began sharing some of the things she’s been going through lately.

Both of us have just come out of deep, intimate relationships, and it feels like we’re each standing at a kind of turning point in our lives. She’s ten years younger than me, and looking at her, I felt a bit like I was looking at a younger sister, there was a touch of tenderness and worry, but even more than that, I felt proud of her. At such a young age, she already has so much clarity, such an open heart, and even in the middle of a lot of pain, she still refuses to settle or compromise on certain important things.

There’s a lot I can learn from her.

So I just sat there listening quietly, and then gave her a hug.

I also wanted to write down one funny little thing about my days in Saquarema.

A few days ago I told Emma,“You guys have both the lagoon and the ocean here, there must be so much fresh fish, right? Should we try to find some?”

So the day before yesterday, we got up at seven in the morning to start our little find-the-fish mission.

Apart from “não falo português” (I don’t speak Portuguese), the second full sentence I somehow learned in Portuguese became:“Bom dia, você sabe onde podemos comprar peixe, por favor?”

Haha.

But that whole morning, we searched and searched and… nothing.

At one house, there was a sign at the door saying they sold fish. We stood outside calling “bom dia” for quite a while, but no one came out. The only one who showed up was their dog, who ran over super excited, giving me kisses and cuddles.

Another place also had a sign saying they sold fish, plus a phone number. We wrote a very proper message, and only got a reply in the evening saying,“You texted the wrong person, I don’t sell fish.”

Emma and I just burst out laughing.

We could only say: maybe, just maybe, buying fish is really not meant to be part of our destiny.

After that nightmare about Beans the night before, I had a very different kind of dream last night.

In the dream, my mum and I were in a therapy session with Keith. While Keith was talking to her and asking her questions, I suddenly saw her not just as “my mum”, but as a young woman, about the same age I am now.

It was like flipping through an album inside the dream: I watched her moving through different stages of being a mother, and at the same time I caught glimpses of her own life, all the exhaustion, the struggle, the grievances she swallowed, and also her own dreams.

In the dream, I felt so much love and tenderness for her.

It was as if I was gently putting down some old, painful memories, the past is already in the past.

We do love each other, and from my heart I really hope that in the future we can create more love and more new stories together.

Somehow, when I woke up from that dream, I felt like there was a little more strength in my body. Something inside me had become a bit lighter.

When I woke up and stepped out of my room, I saw that either Emma or Kel had collected a whole pile of tiny mangoes and laid them out there. Each one was incredibly sweet. I ate a few of them and felt completely, ridiculously happy.

I was eating the little mangoes and said to Emma between bites,“So, what do you think, should we continue our ‘find-the-fish mission’?”

She laughed and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

So off we went again, just the two of us, with Seb on her back, the three of us setting out on a new round of our fish adventure.

The whole way was filled with the strong, clean smell of eucalyptus, and I was completely drunk on that scent.

Every now and then we’d stop here or there to look around: small purple flowers by the roadside, big flamboyant orange blossoms, a horse in the distance slowly eating grass under the shade of a tree… And along the way there were these delicious little pine-ish fruits we could pick and eat as we walked.

We wandered, we nibbled, we looked around, it was honestly hard to imagine being any happier than that.

The little shops with “Peixe” painted in huge letters at the door had become our running joke.

We went by at seven in the morning, no one.

We passed again around ten, still no one.

We walked along half-laughing, half-complaining:“What time do these people even open? Do they actually want to sell fish or not?”

After a while, we saw a few people standing under a huge mango tree, gathering fallen mangos into buckets.

We walked over and asked,“Bom dia, vocês sabem onde podemos comprar peixe, por favor?”

They told us that actually, no one around there was really selling fish.

Then one of the men simply reached into his own bucket, pulled out five fish, said they’d caught them that morning, and handed them to us.

We thanked him and asked how much we should pay.

He waved his hand and said, “Nada, não precisa.”

We kept insisting on paying; he kept insisting on not taking anything.

In the end, we could only thank him properly and accept the fish.

It felt so warm, really, really warm.

On the way back, we passed the hot-pink frangipani tree Emma had been admiring for days. The flowers were in full bloom, the whole tree glowing. We went up to the house and asked the owner if we could maybe take a small branch. She didn’t hesitate for a second, just snapped off a piece and handed it to us with a smile.

I turned to Emma and said,“You guys definitely have to bring her a big bag of mangos or some other fruit later. That’s how neighbourhood love works.”

We both laughed. I really, genuinely love this kind of simple, ordinary, very alive way of living.

When we got home, Emma went to clean and prep the fish, and I changed into my bikini and slipped into the pool. I grabbed a few mangos and sat by the water, eating them there. By the time I finished, my hands and body were sticky with mango juice. I tossed the pits and skins a bit farther away, leaving them for the earth and whatever little creatures might find them.

Then I turned on the outdoor shower and rinsed all the sweetness off my skin, and after that I took one deep breath and dove straight into the pool.

It felt unbelievably good.

After Emma finished cleaning the fish, the three of us divided up the work for lunch.

Kel took charge of grilling the fish, Emma was steaming rice, frying sweet potato chips and at the same time trying to put the kids down for a nap, and I settled in by the counter to make the sauces.

I ended up making three different sauces, all mango-based.

I carefully peeled the mangos, then used my hands to squeeze out the flesh, thick mango juice mixed with little bits of fruit, dropping into the bowl in heavy, fragrant blobs.

After that it was all about play and intuition: a little of this, a little of that, tasting as I went. It felt like my heart and my taste buds were doing the real creating, and my hands were just the vessel following along, haha.

Before we ate, I took Ry (the three-year-old big brother) out into the yard and we cut two big banana leaves to use as our “plates”. We also snipped a handful of lemon leaves to decorate the fish and the sauces.

The fish was incredibly fresh and fatty.

As soon as it hit the fire, it started sizzling, the skin blistering a little, oil dripping down, the smell wrapping around us.

The five of us sat there in the forest, gathered around a “table” we’d made from banana leaves, eating fish and rice with our hands.

Our fingers gently tore open the skin, sinking into the soft, juicy meat underneath.

We spooned bright, tangy-sweet mango sauce over the top and let it drip down the rice.

With no chopsticks or forks between us and the food, everything felt closer.

Our hands were covered in the smell of mango, lemon and spices, a little sour, a little sweet, a little spicy, warm and oily and alive.

In that moment, it didn’t feel like we were “just having lunch”.

It felt like we were part of the forest and the fish and the air itself, existing, breathing, and being.

In that moment, I suddenly remembered another thing about Beans that I really miss:

how much I loved being creative in the kitchen and using food as a way to love him.

Watching his face light up in surprise, the way his eyes would soften and glow with that little bit of admiration, and then seeing his belly puff up after a fantastic meal, those moments gave me such a simple, honest, pure kind of happiness.

Yesterday I realised that this kind of happiness still exists in my life.

No, that’s not even right.

It’s been here all along.

The afternoon before, I’d said I wanted to cook dinner, and I was in full-on excited mode.

I braised a big pot of pork belly until it was soft and full of flavour, then made a little dessert of carrots with coconut and honey. I also prepared two kinds of vegetable soup, actually it was one big pot, with two endings: same base, but one stayed light and simple, and the other turned into a rich version with milk, cheese, cream, peanut butter and miso, slowly simmered into something thick and comforting.

At some point in the afternoon, I was completely buried in chopping, maybe ten different kinds of vegetables, one after another, on the cutting board.

Suddenly Emma called from outside,“Shikin! Come and see the sunset!”

I looked up for a second, and of course a big part of me wanted to drop everything and run out.

But I still had the knife in my hand, so I shouted back,

“Give me a moment! Let me just finish chopping these!”

So I sped up a little, finished the last of the vegetables, tossed them all into the soup pot in one go, turned the heat down low, and left the soup to do its slow, quiet magic.

Then I jogged out of the kitchen and ran to join them for the sunset.

Emma snapped a photo of me in that exact moment, running out of the kitchen towards the light, and when I saw that picture later, I really loved it.

Watching my friends eat the food I make, or seeing my friends’ two little ones devour “tia Shikin’s” dessert, I realise my inner feeling is actually exactly the same to what I felt when I used to cook for Beans:

it’s my way of saying “I love you”in a very concrete, gentle, and honest form.

Little by little, I’m starting to see that this love itself belongs to me.

Beans was a vessel I once poured a lot of that love into, but he is not the source of it.

Breaking up with him doesn’t mean I lost my ability to love, or that my love disappeared with him.

It just means I lost one big container that used to hold it.

The love is still here.

It has always been here, with me.

I’m still the same person who suddenly decides to run out into the yard to pick guava leaves to use instead of bay leaves;

I’m still the one who loves creating a whole table of food that’s both nourishing and looks a little bit like edible artwork;

I still instinctively think about daily nutrition, easily putting together thirty-something different ingredients in one day, whether it’s just for myself or for the people around me;

Finding beauty and fun in small things has always been my way of moving through the world, ever since I was little;

I still have so, so much love in me, and so much creativity.

And honestly, not to brag, but my cooking is still pretty amazing.

These things are mine.

They are still mine.