A Beautiful Poison

by Lydia Kang

Looking just as she remembered him, he was the human version of overcooked cabbage. Pale, slouchy, and unable to make a decision without being told.

stick. The scent of Hazel’s favorite magnolia perfume—smudged onto Birdie’s chest when she held her unconscious mother—was soaped off. So were Holly’s tears. All things inconvenient and embarrassing, humiliating and tragic, all the mistakes and unsaid words would whirl down the drain soon enough.

Pain washed her vision of all the softness in life and allowed her to see all in distinct detail. Sometimes the details hurt, but reality was something she clung to.

Birdie squeezed his arm. She understood the frustration of parenting your own parent—or uncle—and having to watch over and take care of them. She understood having no security in the future, even if that meant the next five minutes. You swayed on a little trapeze of fate, waiting for the slightest breeze to knock you off. A lost job, a broken bone that might bring expensive doctor’s visits. Or something worse.

But it was tiring, so tiring to never be in full possession of yourself. She was a woman, after all. It was their lot in life, wasn’t it? Never to own yourself completely.

He wished to see that unbeautiful, transcendent moment when a soul ceased to reside in its container, weak as it was. There was something to be gleaned in that thin second—a lesson learned, a secret passed to the living that he was greedy to know. So he watched and found he was holding his breath as if suffocation might give him clarity.