By Abigail Wang

Walls streaked in tape was how we left it on the last day. A father’s pride is

Immutable, but at six, I swore I would never do the same when I had children,

Letting them plaster the walls with paper whales and caterpillars, grime

Languishing for later families, because this is how stickiness keeps—

Onerously, obviously, like love does. I came home from kindergarten each day

Wearing a large t-shirt matching the one my father never threw away,

Green and blue and pink, matching sea foam, matching candy canes, matching

Retired old houses in Florida and Pennsylvania that he would one day

Own. We worked alongside each other under incandescent bulbs casting a

Vignette on our scrubbing, soap on drywall, sliding to the carpet: my fingers

Ecstatic and raw, letting the tack have its own way in the gluey dust of an apartment.

Abigail Wang grew up in Bucks County, PA. She has spent the past four years in Pittsburgh and is trying to decide where to go next. Her work can be found in Words Dance and is forthcoming in DIALOGIST. She reads poetry for Persephone’s Daughters.