Alice Chats Sky by Tiffany Hsieh

Alice from the office knows I am Taiwanese like her. Her desk is to my left, my seat is to her right, our coats are left and right of each other in the middle. Alice’s accent makes no apologies. Her gaze says I know you are like me, her ponytail sticking out in spades behind her thirty-something head. It’s too late to say me no Mandarin so Alice wouldn’t chat with me in Mandarin about home stuff, personal stuff, all kinds of stuff under the sky—so she wouldn’t chat sky with me around they no Mandarin. In the lunch room, our lunch bags sit right and left. Alice’s homemade bento has a bed of rice, my homemade bento has a bigger bed of rice. We are no blood sisters but our blood is the same shade of carbohydrates and monosodium glutamate. I usually stuff myself while Alice chats sky about the usual stuff, her cellphone to her left, my cellphone to my right.

Tiffany Hsieh was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada at the age of fourteen. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Gordon Square Review, Juked, The Malahat Review, Passages North, Poet Lore, Room, Salamander, The Shanghai Literary Review, and others. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She lives in southern Ontario.

23 August 2021