Another Place, Another Sound (2024)

On the hotel bed, I showed my mom’s dinner banquet video to my boyfriend. We said nothing and kissed in the end, with our entwining shadows echoing my mother’s video images. My boyfriend left home without saying goodbye. I couldn’t find him. Neither did I find my mother after I returned home. She drunkenly hid herself in a storage room and sat on a chair with her head embedded in a hair dryer, like an astronaut’s helmet. I collapsed onto the doorstep when my mobile phone rang. My boyfriend told me he had left a recording on my phone filled with his love for me. The blue light in the storage room resembled a space in the universe, where love wandered in it, between me and him and between me and her. The next day, my mother and I drove to the beach. My mother might have already known my sexual orientation for a long time but never talked about it. Instead, she told me about the boy who fell in love with her in college. Suddenly, she disappeared while the sun was creeping down.