Non-Fiction

“You look so cozy,” my friend says to me with a smile that pixelates on my laptop screen. I smile back, a little too hard. The sleeves on the jumper I’m wearing stretch slightly beyond the length of my arms. Inside them, I fiddle with the cold, silver ring on my finger, pulling it off and pushing it back with my thumb until it slides back and forth with ease. Then I switch fingers. It’s a healthier habit than the other ones, but not as effective. Stillness seeps into the spaces between the movement. Flickers of feeling and memory; the warmth he left in the wool, the way the sleeves fit perfectly on his arms, leaving bare hands that kept patiently at crossword puzzles. My thumb pulls at the ring too quickly and it flings across the room, landing with a prompt metallic clink. The Zoom meeting flashes shut, and I don’t send another link.

Someday the warmth will leave this jumper, I think to myself as bile begins to bubble in my throat. Tread lightly, says another voice in my head. Oscar Wilde’s. In a poem he wrote for his sister when she passed; one I read at my grandfather’s grave a few weeks ago from the collected works he left me. I haven’t been able to read more. But I haven’t put the book back on my shelf. It waits patiently at my bedside, thick with stories. I pull the jumper off gently. Maybe next time.

Pireh Moosa (she/her) is a media student, based in Karachi, who loves reading, writing, and anything musical. In all kinds of writing, Pireh obsesses over capturing the largeness of miniscule moments in time – the feelings, movements, and encounters that leave us changed, in some way. Her work is inspired by the likes of Vandana Singh, Ocean Vuong, Charlotte McConaghy, Rainbow Rowell, and many, many others, all of whom have changed her life. Currently, her published work can be found or is forthcoming in Star 82 Review, Ice Lolly Review, The Aleph Review, Pandemonium Journal, and Blue Marble Review.

It is a perfect autumn 6 a.m. Morning dew drips from the edge of the roof onto the terrace, leaving darkened patches on the already mismatched wooden planks. The once lush plants that line the garden now wither, petals of flowers ripped off by strong wind, dried leaves tumbling to the earth. In this sixth hour of September 25th, the sky is ruled by neither the moon nor sun. It simply is—colorless sky that begins to tinge blue and see through clouds that drift, dispersed and reformed by the cold autumn breeze.

A pile of scarlets sits at the roots of the lone maple tree in the corner of our front yard, tucked away between two broken fence boards. The crows’ chirping rings through the open back door of the dining room. If I’m quick, I can still catch a glimpse of the flock as they migrate south. I grab a carton of whipping cream from the fridge and turn the stand mixer to high. I scoop 60g of powdered sugar into the mixer before stepping outside. A light mist coats my face, accompanied by the nostalgic scent of earth after rain. My breath leaves my body in a plume of smoke. With every ginger step I take comes a crinkle, crack, a crunch. The grandfather clock in the dining room strikes, six times.

To my mother, the number six is perfect. It is a perfect fourth of the 24-hour day, a perfect half of the 12-hour clock. In Chinese, the number six symbolizes 顺. It’s one of those words that doesn’t have a direct Chinese to English translation. Google translates it as “smooth,” which could work, if it means smooth not in terms of touch but in terms of action—as in a meeting that went smoothly or a smooth flight without hassle or obstacle. Either way, it’s a mark of an auspicious and promising future. It’s lucky.

A car grinds gravel into the ground, generating a brisk gust of wind that sprinkles droplets of water on my face. Another leaf falls from our sugar maple, trapping itself between the rusted bars of the storm drain. I stroll back inside, closing the door with a gentle nudge from my knee. A bouquet of plastic flowers sits in a vase on the faux-granite kitchen counter, and when I move them to the dining table, the thin, wispy fibers that detach from the petals make me sneeze. I bring the chiffon cake I made last night out of the fridge and let it rest. The golden brown crust crumbles off and leaves crispy flakes on the cake stand.

Not only is the number six lucky, it is perfect in every other way. It’s constructed by multiplying the first two prime numbers, two and three. It is also the sum of one, two, and three, which is perfect because those are the number six’s positive proper divisors. Three multiplied by six then gives the good fortune symbolized by the eighteen pleats of soup dumplings. The epitome of perfection.

I pinch the teardrop-shaped bottle of food coloring—one of the kinds you would find at the Dollar Tree, tucked away in some aisle with the other baking supplies—and let a few drops of red fall into the container of whipped cream, which lightens to a baby pink after a few quick stirs. I dot the icing in uneven blobs on the side of the cake and swirl crooked roses on the top. The cake doesn’t look as perfect as those sold in Sam’s Club’s display cases, but it looks natural. Handmade. Authentic, with hints of human imperfection. I lick the excess icing off my fingers—something my mother wouldn’t have liked—before dropping all of my utensils in the sink to be hand washed later. “Never the dishwasher,” my mother would cry. “Waste too much water and electricity.”

Despite my best efforts, I can never seem to be the “perfect Asian son” that I feel is expected of me. Kevin. Son of her professor friend at the University. Cornell. Now at Amazon, making a salary in the hundreds of thousands. Eric. Multi-award-winning violinist, straight A’s. Harvard bound. Xu. MIT. Chemical engineer. Successful career, beautiful wife, three kids. Things that are repeated over and over until they all sound the same, until names disappear and the individual people blend into a collective image of the “perfect Asian son.”

My mother yelps with pleasant surprise when she enters the kitchen. She pulls out her phone, a chain of six beads dangling from her case, and rushes to her birthday cake. Her thumb freezes just before it can take the picture, and she tilts her head to the side.

She frowns and asks, “Doesn’t it look a bit crooked?” “What do you mean? I think it looks fine, no?” I reply.

She thrusts her phone into my hands. “Aiya, it’s just a little bit crooked. Come look. See?

The cake is off center from the stand. It won’t look pretty in the picture.” I groan. “It’ll look fine.”

She looks at me. “The picture won’t be perfect if the cake is crooked. It just won’t look as nice.”

Her red lipstick is uniform, and I already know she spent an hour picking out the exact dress she is wearing and another hour doing her hair and makeup. The picture has to be perfect. It’ll be the memory she holds after her own memories have vanished, just as she fears one day they will. These photographs—always to be taken in sets of six—are what will link her to her past.

“Here, we can fix it using this.” I offer a solution, fishing a spatula from the sink and blasting the spatula with some water before handing it to my mom. She alternates between observing the cake from the top and from the side, like a child playing with the claw machine at my family’s restaurant as they dart back and forth to line up the claw. When the cake is centered, she hands me the spatula.

“Do you want a picture by yourself first?” I ask. She bites her lip, then nods, turning around to grab her sunglasses—to hide her wrinkles—and the cake. She holds it out in front of her and smiles. A smudge of lipstick stains her front teeth. I snap the picture, then at her reminder, take five more, so that later she can go through them all and find the one that was the most perfect.

I’m not like the number six—far from it, actually. Maybe I don’t remind my mother of Kevin, or Eric, or Xu. Maybe I’m not like her photographs, perfect snapshots frozen in time. For me, what matters is that perfect 6 a.m. on an autumn morning. The life that persists even as everything else fades for the winter. The moments and memories that are forever rendered in my mind. What matters is that even though I’m not a “perfect Asian son,” I’m still my mother’s son.

David Chen is a Chinese-American writer from Minnesota. His work has been recognized by Novelly, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and YoungArts, and is in or forthcoming at Ripple Lit, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere. He is also a co-EiC of Aster Lit (@LitAster on Twitter and @aster.lit on Instagram), and you can find him at @davidsongchen on both Twitter and Instagram.

(In loving memory of my Ellie Struble, my sister)

Hey, big sister, to catch you up
I’m 14

I started middle school
I am getting really good at dance
Isabel is going to college this summer
I have friends that I trust and love
Tipper is still here and misses you
I have my own room
I love plants
I am trying to understand math
I realize I don’t like planes
I like cleaning and organizing because it feels comforting
Dad and Mom are trying to figure things out
I actually like writing and I am getting better at reading
I’m still at the same school since kindergarten
I learned that I really really like jewelry
Especially looking at yours

As I list all these things I realize that you have been with me for all these things
Just not right by my side when I needed and wanted a hug
When I wanted a hug after my first dance recital after you left
When I wanted a hug after Milo died
When I wanted a hug after finding what I love to do for fun
When I needed a hug when I figured out we were moving to Michigan
When I needed a hug when I found out Mom and Dad were separating
When I just wanted to have one last hug with you

I’m sure you would give me a hug and say “Everything is going to be okay”
But I miss sitting in your lap
I miss getting hugged by you
I miss smelling your perfume
I miss hearing your voice
I miss hearing your contagious laugh
I miss your smile
I miss saying I love you

I think you would be proud of me
But I honestly don’t know

XOXO

Addeline Struble is a fourteen-year-old student at Sacred Heart Academy in Mt. Pleasant Michigan. As youngest of six children she enjoys writing, ballet, basketball, and summer sun. Ellie, her oldest sister, was killed in a tragic car accident in 2016. This loss has provided Addeline with tragic inspiration for her writing as a form of honoring her sister, while also helping herself and family navigate the pain of loss and joyful memories.

I always wake up around the same time my alarm rings but it is never the alarm that wakes me up. I force myself out of the warmth of my blanket. Winter is no longer at the threshold; it has leapt up from the floors and shrouded the entire apartment. I haven’t quite adjusted to the cold yet. Every winter-time nose block tells me, much like the looks on rickshaw-drivers’ faces, “You’re not from these parts.” None of us are. Somehow it’s colder inside. One of them says it must be from all the water poured on the cement at the construction site in front. The other disagrees. I find my face wash and brush and toothpaste at the same spot I left them last morning. I like it when I know where my things are. I wonder if I’m turning into my mother; she always hated my messy bedroom back home.

The apartment is silent in the mornings. A chilly, lonely silence. I like it this way. I close the door to their bedroom lest the sound of my cooking wake them up. My hands are half smelling of chicken when the koodawala (garbage collector) rings the doorbell. I take the trash out and he asks for the money.

I say, “kal doongi, bhaiyya.”

Will give tomorrow, brother.

He throws me an unsure look. But nods and leaves nevertheless. I make a mental note to tell them, hoping I don’t forget by the time they wake up. It’s almost noon when they step out of bed, my flatmates. I don’t know if they are sleeping in or failing to get up. I don’t ask. We are not that close. Or rather, I am not.

I turn on the stove, wondering what oil to use. I still haven’t bought the sunflower oil. It’s recommended for chicken. We have mustard and coconut though. For a year, I haven’t been in a kitchen without both of these. Typical of apartments with students from more than one end of India. I always wanted to make friends with people from different places. Somehow I found them interesting. I think it runs in the family. Everything different is considered interesting. But as it turns out, humans are twisted, no matter the landscape. The cooker is hot enough now. I open the coconut oil.

I pour it in, glancing at the recipe my sister sent me. I’m not used to following recipes. I’ve always just thrown in random amounts. We all did the same when we first came to the city and started cooking. One of them is here with me now. I’m far from being close to her but I know her well. I know she always forgets to keep her clothes away from the bed after changing from one outfit into another three times. I know she cries a lot while cutting onions. Onions. That reminds me. I must put them in.

The recipe says I must wait now. I walk around in the 25 sq.ft. space of the kitchen, waiting. I can hear mothers shouting at their kids to wake them up. Families live nearby. Which also translates to, the mornings and nights are filled with shouts. In the mornings to begin the day, and in the evenings to spit out the despair of existence. Sometimes I regret moving here. But who do I have anywhere else? It’s weird how such a crowded city can be so lonely. It’s been over a year in the city I dreamt of in the lockdown, the name that substituted a lullaby when I rocked myself to sleep on especially difficult nights. It was a long wait to get here. And I’m tired of the wait.

I tip the cutting board into the cooker, letting the chillies, ginger, garlic and tomato fall into it, dramatic sounds enveloping the kitchen. One of them coughs from the room and I realize that I had forgotten to turn on the exhaust fan yet again. The ingredients begin hissing in the cooker and a sense of urgency builds up in my body. I try to pinpoint the source. Maybe it’s frustration or maybe it’s another of those signals that in every daughter resides a bit of her mother. Or maybe both of these mean the same. She always rushes in the kitchen, my mother, as if someone is beginning to write her death sentence as she cooks and only the completion of her work can rescue her.

The urgency doesn’t leave my body. It keeps building, alongside the growing sounds from the cooker. Images clutter my head. A familiar, unpleasant feeling crawls upwards from the pit of my stomach. Maybe I should sit. But I dare not. I rummage in the rack searching for the garam masala. The pain continues its ascent as I open the fridge to pick out the mint and coriander. Ah, here sits the masala. Of course. My flatmate always keeps it in the fridge. Another of the things I’ve never asked. I measure out the masala and tip the spoon from the edge of the cooker, along with the leaves, the chicken and the rice. It begins to smell like the Eid mornings of my childhood. That’s how I know I haven’t missed any ingredient.

The pain in the stomach seems to have been overpowered by an increasing numbness in my limbs. I don’t rest. I pour in the water and salt and ghee. And begin mixing, something buzzing in my head. Voices. From yesterday’s nightmare. I try to focus on cutting the lemon. One half shoots away from the cutting board and lands in a corner of the kitchen. A scream. I jerk. Concluding it’s from a nearby house, I coil back into myself. I squeeze the other half into the cooker, grinding my teeth together to stop myself from screaming.

Closing the lid, I begin to break down. It can’t be happening. The day has barely begun. I decide against collapsing on the bed, for fear of not being able to get up. I sink to the bed, head bent and fists clenching. Tears begin to cloud my glasses as I hear my flatmates stir in the other room. I try to stifle my cries. Frustration builds in my head. Feet stepping on slippers, slight knocks on the bedside table, sleepy groans. I keep trying. The walls seem to be closing in on me. Loneliness leers at me from all sides.

‘I want a friend,’ I whisper. The whistle blows.

Haneen is an aspiring writer doing her under graduation in English Honours in Delhi, India. She hails from a town in the south of India. Her writings strongly reflect her backgrounds and the changes that shook her life upon relocating to the capital city of Delhi, for higher studies— which is more than a thousand miles away from her hometown. Haneen’s passion for writing dates back to a young age and she seeks to peel off slices out of everyday life to connect with readers. She has been published in three poetry anthologies, “Soul Candy” (2020), “In Which Poetry Breathes Life” (2020), “I.R.L. Collection: 99 Poems on the Dark Side of the Internet” (2020) and in Issue 1 of the Juvenile Literary Journal of The Young Writers Initiative in 2020.

They  said  we  were  born  just  yesterday, they  said  what  do  we  know?  How long have we stayed  here?

All  these  sound  like  insults  but  no,  they  are  facts.

Yes,  we  were  born  just  yesterday  but  we  stayed  up  all  night  to  unravel  the  histories  of ages  past. We  were  born  just  yesterday  but  we  stayed  up  all  night  to  decipher  the obstacles  that  fell  our  heroes  past. Yes,  we  were  born  just  yesterday  but  we  stayed  up all  night  to  find  solutions  to  tomorrow’s  problems  already!

Yes,  we  know  not  so  much  because  we  focus  on  what  is  work  for  us  and  refuse  to  be distracted  by  fake  visions  and  missions. We  know  not  so  much  because  we  avoid  knowing  whatever  is  not  in  God’s  curriculum  for  us. We  know  not  so  much because  we found  out  so  much  is  too  much  and  ‘too much’  can  change  our  lanes  of  travel  so  we refuse  to  know  so  much  which  is  too  much!

Yes,  we  have  not  stayed  here  too  long,  but  we  have  traveled  far  back  and  way  forth  to understand  that  time  itself  is  a revealer.  It  will  soon  reveal  the  depth  of  our  strive  and the  height  of  our  drive  to  not  only  survive—  but  to  thrive  in  not  only  these  present  days, but also  the  ages  even  yet  to  come.

We  were  born  just  yesterday  but  we  stayed  up  all  night  to  travel  into  the  ages  past  and centuries  to  come!

Mercy Leshi is a Nigerian Creative Writer, Content Creator and Scribe. She’s a Lover of Art and Creativity beyond the average. Her works has been featured in DeAltar, a religious writing organization and SYNW, a society of young Nigerian Writers amidst others.