Spring
by Victoria Chang
I used to think that grief was heavy. But it is
actually like an edge. It weighs nothing. It
consumes itself to remain a line. On some
days, when I am too heavy with joy, I divide
myself into cubes and triangles so that I can
once again be faceted. What to do with my
dead mother’s proverbs, my dead father’s
unlived years. Because I killed him, I have the
extra years in his first briefcase. The black
briefcase had a plastic red label with his
English name embossed on it. Briefcases were
once hard cased, lasting longer than the people
who carried them in sunlight. My father’s
briefcase is so heavy, it feels like a eucalyptus
trunk. I move it from house to house. Each time
it takes one more person to move it. I don’t
know where the extra years are coming from.
There’s no one left to ask. Now I know that
when we die, each of us has a surplus. That
the body leaves, but the years stay. 