Photo by Albert Stoynov on Unsplash
by Christine H. Chen
It was this day, decades ago, Chinese New Year’s day, when you and I trekked along Marginal Way, chilly wind on our cheeks, and we stop to gaze at the cliffs, the Atlantic Ocean blue blending into the azure horizon, your eyes at first vacant, then you turned to me and smiled, and I blew little clouds of cold air, and said, look I’m smoking!
It was in this quaint little store in Ogunquit with a wood bear wearing a woolen red beret at the entrance we entered where I found this box with the hand painted crimson-chested house finches on a branch, the cliffs and ocean carved in the background.
It was you who shook your head and giggled and made fun of me for wanting worthless baubles to fill the shelves in the apartment we shared in Parkmerced in San Francisco.
It was me who insisted we bring back a souvenir from this trip, a box in solid teak with veneer and lacquer treatment and smooth lid-closing golden hinges the store owner assured me, the interior lined in a soft burgundy velvet, me who clapped my hands like a child when you took the box from me and headed to the cash register, still shaking your head but laughing.
It was you who left early before this year’s Chinese New Year’s day, it was I who watched your metastasized body cleansed to ash, your ashes in a plastic bag nestled inside the velvety interior of the box on the chimney mantel.
It is only today, long after the deafening firecrackers had died, the festivities ended, that I’ve placed a basket of oranges and mandarins on the mantel with a bundle of cherry blossoms, imagining you next to me, inhaling the citrus fragrance and sinking your teeth into the bittersweet tangerine skin.
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 christinehchen.com and @ChristineHChen1.
