We Do Not Part

by Han Kang

With grandparents, things tend to be more straightforward…My grandmother’s a giver, just giving and giving without end.

As the snow lands on the wet asphalt, each flake seems to falter for a moment. Then, like a trailing sentence at the close of a conversation, like the dying fall of a final cadence, like fingertips cautiously retreating before ever landing on a shoulder, the flakes sink into the slick blackness and are soon gone.

As ever, pain isolates me. I am trapped in the torturous moments my own body generates second by second.

I thought of you so often that I swear sometimes I could almost see you. Like when you peer inside a dark aquarium. How if you put your face to the glass and keep looking, you’ll eventually see something glimmering inside.