after Jennifer S. Cheng
Dear Mom,
………I want to describe for you the snow. How white smooths the mountains into cones. How,
in the evening light, the cones become islands, the space between them broken waves. How
sound fractures into echoes.
………I remember the first time you showed me the Chocolate Hills. A square photo in our
encyclopedia. You said Lola came from the same island. An enchanted land with hills like
Hershey’s Kisses, straight out of a fairy tale.
………I remember when you began to forget. How you grew more quiet, cold. How your words,
more magical, echoed of another time, another world.
Matthew Torralba Andrews (he/him) is a queer writer of mixed Filipino descent. His fiction has appeared in Apogee, Bellingham Review, Cincinnati Review, Sonora Review, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University and lives in northern Arizona.