Bestiary

by K-Ming Chang

Someday this story will open like a switchblade.

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.

I got out, my mother said, as if a family were a fire.

She laughed and asked me to define a father. I said it was someone who didn’t have the strength to carry his own name and had to employ others to do it.