I arrived already hollow.
From oceans away. From years away.
From the long embargo
on flights out of China.
It was 2024,
and I hadn’t seen my parents
since 2018.

I should have been happy.
And I was—briefly—
just long enough
for that happiness
to break
against what I saw.

She had always been small—
five feet tall, fifty kilos on a full day—
but now she was
a waif coughing in her own chair.

Clear liquids only.
Everything else
risked choking.
She was disappearing,
not in metaphor
but in kilograms.

I was exhausted.
Disoriented.
Still half in departure gates,
half in language that no longer fit.
I hadn’t slept.
The house felt smaller.
The days sharper.
My body was home,
but the rest of me stayed in transit.

We sat at the table
trying not to chew too loudly.
My father and I
ashamed of every swallow,
while she sipped from a cup
that counted as dinner.

The plates felt theatrical.
The food tasted wrong.
But we ate—because she told us to,
and we didn’t know
how else to obey
the shrinking in her voice.

Then on the second-to-last day,
I stood too quickly.
My shoulder caught the wall.
A dent bloomed
just above the chair rail—
not even deep.
Didn’t break the paint.
Didn’t mark the surface
unless you knew
where to look.

But they saw.
And I looked.
And we all paused
as if it meant something.

And now I can’t stop seeing it.
That harmless wound in plaster—
a tiny piece of the wall
that somehow absorbed
all the guilt
I didn’t know
where else to put.

It’s still there.
So is Mum.
But for a moment
we were bracing for collapse—
and the only thing that gave
was a tiny piece of the wall.