Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

Over time our conversations became a lot like explaining a movie to someone who has walked in on the last thirty minutes.

The funeral was weird, mostly because I hadn’t been to church in over ten years and I didn’t realize just how bizarre religious practice can appear to an atheist.

Then came the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, which sounded more like a Charlie Brown VHS special than an appropriate reading for a funeral.

wondered if I could ever know all of her, what other threads she’d left behind to pull.

If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way. That if we had to be ripped apart right at our turning point, just when things were really starting to get good, the least god could do was make a few of her daughter’s pipe dreams come true.