The Astonishing Colour of After

by Emily X.R. Pan

If he looked in my eyes straight on, he would know how he’d pierced me with an arrow, how its shaft was still sticking out of my chest, twitching each time my heart contracted.

If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathered them like drops of water in a desert. I’d always counted on having an oasis.

I think about that morning a lot. There was one poem that I’ll always remember: I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You’ll know it by the row of stars Around its forehead bound. I’m not even sure if that’s the whole poem. But I think about it a lot. I wonder what she lost.

Memories that tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live.