Photo by Onur Bahçıvancılar on Unsplash
by Christine H. Chen
It’s a labyrinthine bazaar where tulip embroidered shawls pile on never-worn pashmina scarves, vases sit next to unread magazines and mail catalogs, lamps with curved spines drooping to the ground. Photo albums heaped up on the dining table, pens from hospital visits collected in a mason jar.
Uncle and I pad on discarded shopping bags like rugs of dried leaves on hardwood floor. A false elbow move, and a red ceramic bowl Ma got for free for a promotional deal at a grocery store slips and lands on a pile of bathroom tissue rolls, scattering them like bowling pins. We plod forward like wooden dolls, wary of stacked boxes of ramen noodles against the wall falling on us.
Behind a plastic curtain separating the kitchen and the bedroom, we reach Ah Ma who sits on a corner of her bed, holding Ah Ba’s urn, screaming when she sees us, leave me alone, leave everything alone!
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
