Origami Microchap

What Goes Around  

Click title to download PDF microchap

Cover art by Lauri Burke

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my mama tells me that all good people are reborn in the west

& before babies are conceived they look down on earth to choose their mother. my mama
tells me that when she was my age the moon was the only thing that kept her
from jumping. because it was just so beautiful. because her sin
is an heirloom that she is given but not forgiven.
my mama squeezes rolls of skin
in her fingers, asks me to
snip away strands
of graying
hair.
my mama says
her face is more yellow
compared to mine, our whiteness a
measure of our past bodies. the er doctor tells
me that there is something wrong with my mama’s brain
or heart, she lies on the leather sofa and cries the same tears at her
baba’s funeral, because death is not sad only victorious, because time is a ladder
she has tried to climb, because why would her skin be this shade of yellow if she didn’t deserve it?

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for those we love

we glaze our faces out of a half-
empty glass, lying the only language
we know how to speak. in this
country, to leave means to love

selfishly what is ours.
only now, my bones are
fractured on the promise of
future bodies.

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Emma Wang © 2019