Bestiary

by K-Ming Chang

I see the way you wear your hands without worry, but someday they’ll bury something. Someday this story will open like a switchblade. Your hands will plot their own holes, and when they do, I won’t come and rescue you.

Each language was worn outside her body, clasped around her throat like a collar.

You think burial is about finalizing what’s died. But burial is beginning: To grow anything, you must first dig a grave for its seed. Be ready to name what’s born.

But there’s nothing inside him we can spend, not unless grief is a currency.

Your grandmother’s grief has grown its own body. She raises it like another child, one she loves better than me and my sister, one that can never leave her.

all losses have lifetimes, always longer than we think,

We didn’t blame our mother for her lies: We loved them into littler truths.

You’re my mother, I said, and you’re supposed to prepare me for any future. But who, she said, can prepare you for the past?

all men are synonyms none the word you’re looking for