She could feel a bead of moisture trickle slowly down her lower back as she watched all the
other kids in her class scribbling furiously, filling up their papers with glorious tales of what they did on their summer vacations.
Her own paper lay on her desk, a pristine white canvas untouched by ink.
What could I possibly write about, she fretted, her panic increasing by the second as she watched the timer on the board count down. Kalpana could tell that Mrs. Campbell was the kind of
teacher who would make them all share what they had written, which would be pretty hard to do with nothing but empty space on her paper.
Not for the first time, Kalpana cursed her family’s rotten luck.…
I get this way, this time of year.
Light begins to shift and I will notice ………………that wheel turning.
Cicadas whirring louder, they will know.
They beckon their own dying ………………soon to come.
Come back, I ran ahead. The sunlight is still bold
and I see blue sky through the haze of heavy air and ………………brave cicadas. They leave their little shells some years,
carapaces rattling on the tree trunks. Less than corpses, ………………more than ghosts. I’ve plucked their wings of cellophane
to make my art, scavenged from the undead
who are gone to other places underground ………………to wait for seven years. Late summer is the worst part
of the southern year, when I turn older and begin to welcome dying
vines and fleeing birds and memories of school and change and
wood-smoke, bonfires, sweaters.…
“Speed up, or the next thing you know, you’ll have a hole blown up in your head,” the soldier threatened.
Rocks scraping at my bare feet, I scrambled up the almost non-existent track. All the while, I thought about how I could so naturally understand the Japanese words that he said. The realization clawed at my heart.
“I don’t know why I had to bring him along. Doesn’t seem much use anyway. Might as well kill him instead,” I heard him grumble.
Well, he might’ve not known, but I knew the reason why I was being brought along. The fact that I used to climb up the little mountain next to our village every morning, easily made me the best person to know the way up the maze-like forest of the mountain.…
My two brothers share a bedroom in the middle of the hallway. I share a room with my sister down at the end, across from my mom and stepdad’s room.
My sister and I share one full-sized bed that’s pushed right up next to the window. I sleep on the window side. On the wall across from my sister’s side is a big mirror and when we jump on the bed, we watch ourselves in it.
Laughing.
Floating.
Hung up by a nail next to the mirror, right by the door frame, there’s a small, pink porcelain Lord’s Prayer wall plaque. It has dark pink and blue flowers in each of the rounded corners and the prayer is printed in fancy writing in the center.
Every night I clasp my hands underneath my chin and recite the prayer in my head as I kick my sister’s cold feet away.…
Untitled, from the series “How to Make the Coffin Dance”, Myriam Dalal, 2016
D Day
On the day of my brother’s funeral, I heard that my father danced in front of his coffin. I tried to imagine it: the steps, the location of the coffin in the parking lot of the building, the mourners watching my father, the face of my brother, that of my father, what each of them was wearing that day and whether my father’s clothes would have been undone, his shirt coming partly unbuttoned during the performance. I wasn’t allowed to come down to the building’s entrance to see my brother in the coffin. I was told it was better if I stayed there, sitting on the sofa in the foyer of our home, while the rest of the family went down to see him lying down with his eyes closed one last time.…
They stood waiting to cross the intersection as a line of cars lumbered downtown. Bobby fingered the phone in his pocket and glanced over at Gabriella. Gabriella was in the middle of a story about their friends Jessica and Raul. They’d been in couples therapy for almost six months. Raul had become a better listener, which had made Jessica happier, but Raul was happier too.
“With enough effort,” Gabriella said, “relationships can improve.”
Bobby turned his head to watch a cyclist shoot past, pedals whirling.
“It’s amazing,” Bobby said. “Bike riders go so fast on crowded city streets, much faster than cars.” He stroked the hairs of his tiny goatee. “Why don’t more people get around on bikes? Europeans are just smarter than Americans in that way.…
Curdled screams, purple arms. You entered, wailing, on a black tide of blood and guts. I inhaled your wet hair and clung onto you so tightly I thought you might burst.
But you didn’t. And my life was made.
Now by some cruel joke you stand before me, here in the depths of the underworld. My son! A living, breathing man, ruddy-cheeked and eyes shining. Your chest rises and falls. Blood pulses through your every sinew. Look how the ghosts clamour to catch a glimpse of you.…
