Supplantations

TITLE: "Supplantations"

AUTHOR: May Lin

TRIGGER WARNINGS: SUICIDE BY HANGING

Extension cords and steel wires. Anything can supplant a noose 

if you try hard enough, the way any woman can supplant a dead 

mother with enough time. When my grandmother died, I could 

only think of how devastating it was to lose her plum-pickled 

greens. Suppose it’s hard to love someone from oceans away. 

Suppose it’s easy to supplant kinship with spearmint toothpaste

and parmesan cheese and other forms of transregional trade. This

blood does not run thicker than the waters between us. 

& There you were, outside on a winter day, hands full of my 

heart and the first snow. There you were, hands on the reins 

of a crimson sleigh, tight to the skin around my neck. 

It’s easy to substitute intimacy for words and words for 

memories with enough time. Here’s a trade: These hands for walls

that splinter apart. We watch the gunshots one last time, 

these walls for wings, this open back scraping Heaven.