“I fucking hate rice,” she
told me. “And I’m beginning
to kinda
hate you for loving it.”

“Shit,” I said, “what
did rice ever
do to you?”

She opened her purse
took out the pack of smokes
and fished one out
with her lips. “Fuck,” she said,
looking for the lighter.
“I think I still
have the pits in my knees…”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I was a little girl,
alright, and whenever I
did something that my dear grandma
considered naughty she’d
pour raw rice in a corner
of the room and make me kneel
on it and just stand like that for…
I don’t know, hours.”

“Really?”

“Really!” She blew the smoke
in my face. “To this day,
bitch still wonders
how I could steal her savings
from the pension. I didn’t
even need the money. I just hated
her guts is all. And now
I hate rice. And you.”

“Well,” I said. “I never stole
from my grandma. And to
this day I don’t hate walnuts.”

“What?”

“Yeah, that was my version
of the punishment. I knelt on
shells of walnuts just
like you with the rice. And I
don’t hate ’em.”

She blew more
smoke in
my face

Thank you!

there were times when she bit and
chewed the inside
of her elbow

to spit the bits of flesh
and the blood
on her grandma

but those times were over

almost forgotten

along with the teachings that
her blood is poisoned
because she was conceived with the
wrong woman, meaning
not the one grandmother intended for
her father

But today all those
people were dead. Only father was
alive

He was all right. A hard working
man, busy with life

busy enough not to notice
that his daughter
is constantly sprinkling ashes in
his food and coffee

He’d almost consumed the
contents of
his mother’s urn

there’s just
a bit left

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Thank you!