Huiying B Chan

Tubes of saline solution gurgled and burped as I sat down at the water monitoring station in my lab. I yawned open my laptop, ready to trudge through another day of research at which I was both singularly expert and profoundly apathetic. An acid wave swelled in my chest when the email landed in my inbox. Before I could think, I grabbed a plastic tub, shuffled around a security camera to the office’s display aquarium, and staggered out the back door.

When Mother calls me Daughter I say we will talk about that later. We will not. The unsaid goes seen before it suffocates in the air. I try not to look away from dissolution. On walks I repeat I am willing to die I am willing to die. I want to die so I can be alive. Dog walks into Mother’s kitchen when she is ready to die. She waits alone her body pressed against cool tile until Mother notices. Green fronds retract into knit when they are touched. When touched a leaf’s cell loses water given to another.

In the mornings, I forget the deadbolts of wind through the sycamores. Soon I will rinse their sockets in spring’s dirty luster, each branch skirted with pale fat. To ripen, blushed, and still taste like the spoiled pickings of the city. Any season bursting into rebel fruit, the tender weight over my mouth. I’m hungrier than you think I am.