“Persimmons are one of those fruits, like Asian pears and rambutans, that are common in Asian communities in the United States, and are most often found in Asian groceries. For many New Englanders, fall means apple season, but for me and my family, it means it’s time for persimmons! I was also considering getting birds tattooed, since my mother’s given name in Chinese is 燕 (Yan) which means swallow (like the bird). I wanted my first tattoo to reflect my cultural identity and heritage, so when I realized I could put these two ideas together, I was so excited to get it inked. (As a bonus, the tattoo also references one of my favorite movies, Past Lives, which discusses the Korean concept 인연 (in-yeon, fate) as the accumulation of little interactions between two people across different lifetimes. The two central characters discuss what they may have meant to each other in a past life, and one example they use is: “Maybe, we were just a bird and the branch it sat on one morning.”)”