Show One | 03.27.2026
Sarah Ong
GRAPHIC DESIGN
I don’t know what to say about it. This isn’t the final time I’ll come back to this, but the sense of finality is palpable. Another death to mourn.
I think of my grandmother’s womb, and my great grandmother before her, and my face reflecting theirs; of my father, and his dark hair, and how as a child it was the same as his—now the wave in my hair is somewhere in between my parents. Though I have my mother’s smile, my grandmother’s lipstick matches me much better than mom’s. Dad says I look just like my great grandma. Do I look like my grandmother, too?
(Making dinner)
The house smells of spices when I get home. I don’t know their names, but I know their taste on my tongue and they live in the stains on my shirt. I wash the rice two or three times, flooding the bowl with water and swirling the grains, scrunching them in my palm, and releasing the water back into the sink. Later, when I hear the call, “Makan, makan!” I set the table with eight plates. After we eat, my grandparents retreat back to their room.
(Eggs for breakfast)
The bird that fell out of our birdhouse looked so much like her. Its naked body, pink, and wrinkled, and new—crawling with ants and baking in the sun. My grandmother had fallen while trying to get out of the shower, and I swear, she was the bird. Skin stretched over the small bones, eyes that would not meet mine, small claws.
I picked it up with my hands and tried to bring it to safety.
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