by Kimmy Chang
I work from home, which is good, because I’m not great at getting up. I check email, flip through a chapter of manga, then hit snooze again. Half an hour evaporates. I log onto the virtual machine; gray logs and red error-bugs chirr up. My husband works from home too, and when I mention it to my dentist, she winces and says, I could never, then just wait. Wait until the first year is up. I tell her we were high school sweethearts, that we’ve already done a decade, and her loupes fog—light flattening, then slipping away—as she tilts me back further, bibbed, jaw cranked open.
Kids, then? Her scaler taps my molar, metal coaxing enamel, and she supplies her own answer: ah, DINKs? I don’t know what it means, and with her hand in my mouth I can’t ask, so I nod; the suction hisses. She keeps talking—how she loves big family holidays, how she wants six, how she already has names—until she snaps off her gloves, wipes my chin, and says, I’ll see you in six months.
Six months drops me into pre-K: my mother crouched to my height outside Pebble Creek, me licking a popsicle as she told me I was going to have a little brother. I asked if that meant Dad would be home more, and she nodded, smiling, so I ran to the classroom cubbies and stacked my books into a neat pile—made space, decided I’d be a great big sister. But she miscarried, and after that the lock clicked more often. Dinner cooled under foil. I learned the sound of the garage door not opening.
Years later, early twenties, I started meeting my father for coffee. A year into it, I told him I didn’t want kids. He sat across from me with a lavender latte sweltering in plastic, unscrewed the lid, and went to the counter for hot water. He poured it into the half-empty cup until the purple thinned and paled, then came back and said I want to be a grandpa, then you wouldn’t do that to me… deny me a legacy. His hand clamped the cup. The latte sloshed as he listed his reasons: who will take care of you, what’s the point, you’ll change your mind. I watched the diluted purple settle and thought of the locked bedroom door in my childhood home, the thin line of light under it. I told him I’ll consider it.
Two years later he didn’t come to the wedding. The month of, he asked what I was covering: his tux or his lodging. A week later, he texted: so where’s my gift? He paid for nothing. Even then, some stubborn part of me kept picturing him there—hand on my arm, finally choosing me. When I asked him to walk me down the aisle, he said I’ll try.
Back in the dentist’s chair, she lowers the light and says, so—six months, okay? The suction hisses, faithful. I make that same small, wet sound. She nods, satisfied, as if I’ve agreed to something simple, and sends me back to my life—mouth numb, calendar already slotting me in.
Kimmy Chang is a Texas-based poet and computer-vision engineer. A 2026 Writers’ League of Texas Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, ONE ART, Unbroken, and The Disappointed Housewife, among others. Read more at https://www.kchang.xyz/.
Emerge Literary Journal 