A grandmother reaches the end of her patience and staples her husband of thirty years to a telephone pole.
An orphan receives a package from a country no one has ever heard of, finding in it a jade bracelet, tangerines, and a small red bag full of salt from her parents’ tears.
A sister sprouts a heart the size of a petal-soft house, invites for hotpot her late father, her late mother, her late siblings and cousins, and finally, herself.
A wife dresses like a mirror every morning to her husband’s disappointment.
A girl enters a classroom on the first day of a new school and hears all the ancestors call out her name at once.
An aunt opens her chest and finds a meowing cat, a blue cup, a Formica chair, and a mother who asks: who would you be if you were?
A daughter plucks her parents’ eyes and buries them in the night. In time, they begin to blink. In time, lights the hue of dew show her where they are.
A widow pulls the corners of her grief up like a tulle skirt and begins to count her joys like toes.
A mother sews birds into the narrow bones seaming her children’s spine, ushers them to fly fly fly.
A woman unclasps her bra and, after eighty years, moths flock out.