room with no direct sunlight
my room in boston is so small. it is just a hallway with a bathroom attached.
i don’t call this place home.
outside my window is a wall. when the sun hits its highest point,
the wall turns white.
my grandmother’s hair is the color of snow.
her hair sifting through my fingers—my first snowfall.
my room echoes with my father’s voice. he asks me if i know how to survive the cold.
snow sits as grains of salt on my windowsill. heaven’s urn has tipped over upon the city.
outside my window is a wall. when the sun hits its highest point,
the wall turns white.
sunshine streaming down the brick.
a memory: my grandmother’s legs give out. she falls to the floor
and lays mute like nothing is wrong. my father
grows so angry he spits when he shouts. my grandmother’s face wrinkles with hurt.
i am pale as a ghost. but i am not a ghost.
if i were a ghost, i could walk through walls, i could see my grandmother again.
a memory: my father demands i stay home. he does not ask what he can do to make me stay.
my father does not know
i left home because i am tired of him
looking through me.
outside, death is just falling from the sky.
my tears taste of salt. sunshine streaming down my cheeks.
the night after my grandmother dies, it snows so gently. i catch a snowflake in my palm.
i think that snow is a sign of love. i think she is watching over me.
if the world is an oyster, people are pearls, lacquered and lacquered with grief.
home was my forehead pressed to my grandmother’s neck.
i refuse to be my father. i swear he was the reason for half my grandmother’s bruises, patches of
blood just beneath the surface of her rice paper skin.
the afterlife is a box with a bathroom attached.
the snow outside is white ash on my windowsill, light and loose, gleaming.
crushed pearls.
Melanie Lau is a writer from Honolulu, Hawaii. She is currently working towards a BFA in creative writing at Emerson College. Her writing has been featured in Catfish Creek, Flash Fiction Online, and Blue Marble Review. Although she specializes in fiction, she loves to dabble in nonfiction and poetry. In any case, she writes emotional stories, ones that strike the heart and linger in the mind.