Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash
by Christine H. Chen
When Ah Ma threw the fake Ming vase that missed Ah Ba’s head by a few inches, and the vase shuttered against the wall in three pieces, my cousin and I scampered to the swings in the backyard. We pushed ourselves high into the sky, swing chains squealing from their metal joints. We dove like two doves in the troposphere. Our home, a dollhouse with its façade of white and gray slate zooming in and out of sight. Behind the glass windows, we watched a silent movie of two gesticulating marionettes, their faces twitching, their arms jerky. They circled each other, they pointed fingers.
Christine H. Chen’s fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Ghost Parachute, Time & Space Magazine, Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, Best Microfiction 2024, Best Small Fictions 2024, and elsewhere. Find her at www.christinehchen.com and @ChristineHChen1
