Cold Enough for Snow

by Jessica Au

grief also, and this surprised me, that she would not try and mask it somehow, that she was not ashamed of the drama, as my family would have been, but inhabited it with rage and sadness, as if it were the cloak of some great animal that she had just slain.

thought of how, at the bathhouse, the babies and younger children had clung to their mothers as they bathed them, tipping water over their heads while holding up a hand to protect their eyes, how they did not feel truly separated from each other yet, but rather still part of the same body, the same spirit.

The earth smelled cold and rich, like the bottom of a well,

The water as it poured down the rocks was bright and white, like salt.