The Night Tiger

by Yangsze Choo

We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.

After all, half of a broken pair is one: the unlucky number of loneliness.

But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.

If the dead lived on in people’s memories, then I’d keep him safe forever.