She Is a Haunting

by Trang Thanh Tran

Silence is the absence of sound other than itself—penetrating, filling, clawing its way through your ears.

“Just because you feel lucky to be alive and fed doesn’t mean you can’t be angry.” Anger is a fire. Anger is adrenaline. It’s kept me going for so long, burning for so long, with ambition, with pettiness. I’ll show you had become a mantra throughout high school. Bullies, racists, useless guidance counselors: I’ll show you.

Anger is what she deserves to hold in place of self-deprecation.

“I am,” Florence says at last. “But I’m not keen on burning myself out. Not as fast as you, Jade.”

What is it like to open your eyes and see your world completely gone wrong? The invaders emerging from the

mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage. It doesn’t take a genius to parse that word from the handwriting on the photograph. Bà Cố and Cam are incidental relics. The racism is not subtle once you start to look.

I’m getting what I deserve, because I believed in my father. I loved him enough to hope that he loved me too.

I carry the burden of being the first child, and it sinks me into the soil.