Amelia Ao (17)
Amanecer
There is a church near my house. I’ve never been inside before, but sometimes if I stand at the right place in the center of my living room, at the right time, I can see blue and red reflections from the stained glass windows spreading across my palms just as the church bells signal the break of dawn. My father and I used to walk past the parking meters near the church and drop quarters in the unpaid ones. God’s service, he called it. Then we’d walk back home and I’d wait for blue and red reflections to mark up my palms, my cheeks, my hips.
There’s also a hospital near my house. I’ve been inside before. I am five years old and sick without knowing it. They never tell you you’re sick when you’re little—you assume that the hospital trips are normal, that the taste of chlorine and the scrape of hospital gowns against your thighs are universal. It’s all rather blurry now, but I know there was a moment where my father looked at me and started to cry. And I knew very plainly, without knowing how I knew, that he thought I was going to die in that moment.
But I didn’t die, did I? I don’t know much, but I know that it’s been 3 years and 10 months and 7 days since my father last spoke to me willingly. It has been a few days since he last looked me in the eye. And there are some things that are strangely ordinary and strangely heartbreaking to a 17-year-old and this is one of them—not knowing why, just knowing that this is how it is. So maybe I did die that day after all. I wouldn’t know.
We drive by the hospital sometimes, my mother and my father and my sister and I, but we’ve never stepped inside since that day. The car is usually quiet, but my father sometimes reaches over to pinch my sister’s cheeks and she swats his hand away and I want to shake her and say, He doesn’t ever talk to me anymore, you are so lucky, you are sososo lucky. It strikes me then that maybe we’ve never gone to church because we have nothing to believe in. But I don’t say anything to her, and it feels like we can’t save each other this time, at least not anymore.
There is a church near my house. I’ve never been inside before, but sometimes I like to imagine what it’s like in there. There would probably be a lot of people, a lot of fancy ties and skirts that go down to knees, a lot of quiet voices and whispered promises that people mean but don’t always keep. The stained glass would probably look more beautiful up close. And I’d probably drop a few quarters on my way in, I’d sing hymns under my breath and hold hands with strangers, I’d kneel before God and ask to speak with Him, and God would ask who He is, and the church bells would keep on ringing.
Amelia is a senior at Wayland High School. She’s won various art awards and has been featured in other publications.
Amanecer
There is a church near my house. I’ve never been inside before, but sometimes if I stand at the right place in the center of my living room, at the right time, I can see blue and red reflections from the stained glass windows spreading across my palms just as the church bells signal the break of dawn. My father and I used to walk past the parking meters near the church and drop quarters in the unpaid ones. God’s service, he called it. Then we’d walk back home and I’d wait for blue and red reflections to mark up my palms, my cheeks, my hips.
There’s also a hospital near my house. I’ve been inside before. I am five years old and sick without knowing it. They never tell you you’re sick when you’re little—you assume that the hospital trips are normal, that the taste of chlorine and the scrape of hospital gowns against your thighs are universal. It’s all rather blurry now, but I know there was a moment where my father looked at me and started to cry. And I knew very plainly, without knowing how I knew, that he thought I was going to die in that moment.
But I didn’t die, did I? I don’t know much, but I know that it’s been 3 years and 10 months and 7 days since my father last spoke to me willingly. It has been a few days since he last looked me in the eye. And there are some things that are strangely ordinary and strangely heartbreaking to a 17-year-old and this is one of them—not knowing why, just knowing that this is how it is. So maybe I did die that day after all. I wouldn’t know.
We drive by the hospital sometimes, my mother and my father and my sister and I, but we’ve never stepped inside since that day. The car is usually quiet, but my father sometimes reaches over to pinch my sister’s cheeks and she swats his hand away and I want to shake her and say, He doesn’t ever talk to me anymore, you are so lucky, you are sososo lucky. It strikes me then that maybe we’ve never gone to church because we have nothing to believe in. But I don’t say anything to her, and it feels like we can’t save each other this time, at least not anymore.
There is a church near my house. I’ve never been inside before, but sometimes I like to imagine what it’s like in there. There would probably be a lot of people, a lot of fancy ties and skirts that go down to knees, a lot of quiet voices and whispered promises that people mean but don’t always keep. The stained glass would probably look more beautiful up close. And I’d probably drop a few quarters on my way in, I’d sing hymns under my breath and hold hands with strangers, I’d kneel before God and ask to speak with Him, and God would ask who He is, and the church bells would keep on ringing.
Amelia is a senior at Wayland High School. She’s won various art awards and has been featured in other publications.