By SARAH WU
I learned to be wrapped from a young age. Underneath a Christmas tree, I sat below their pine bottoms. Dangling lights brushed my forehead. Taught how presents should be dressed in lovely colors. Taught to be an object, paper wrapping hiding the curve of the natural body within. Only have a peek! A flash of skin barely showing, yet that hint of desire keeps your eyes attached. Not too much! Just the act of unpeeling is enough. Is it called hunger if you are fed by touch alone?
Audacious, you. You voracious holder. What a delight it must be to become the receiver. Peel my wrapping from my body, stroke your hands across my skin; I am bare and embarrassed and always quite afraid. I lift my eyes, and the wrapping falls from around me. Don’t all objects look smaller when you unwrap them? Don’t look so surprised—
you
were never supposed to be in my stories.
We are in elementary school. It is wintertime, and the classrooms are filled with holiday decorations. Cherry red mistletoe berries hanging, the smell of peppermint in the air. Outside, snow strips color from roads. Today, no one is in school, and the empty desks prove so. Even the teacher has walked out of the classroom to retrieve colored crayons. For your holiday projects, she says as the reason for her departure, though it is no secret what she does when she leaves. The smell of cigarettes clutches so closely to her red and green woolen sweater.
We are sitting on the carpeted ground. Soft to the touch, I ground the heels of my palm into the invitation of the rug, and watch you rip open your paper lunch bag like a gift. Its contents spill from its brown skin. The innards consist of a green apple heart, cheese stick bones, a gnarly smile from a large pretzel.
You start with:
the apple. Teeth sliding against the white flesh, the apple struggles at first. Then, its body caves in, it’s clear juice bleeding onto your lips. You wipe it away with a folded napkin—
the cheesestick. Fingers tear crevices against pale yellow surfaces. Its soft surface twists and caves under your fingers—
the pretzel. One bite plucked from its body, and you are filled by that small act of violence. You do not have enough grace to let the pretzel unexist.
Their lives are cut short by the edges of your teeth. Your hunger transforms their infinity into an ending.
Except for the pretzel. The pretzel always remains. Do you want the rest? I ask.
You shrug. Even now, your attention is careless. Not really.
I bring the pretzel to my lips, taste salt and stale bread. My teeth struggle to gain ground, but I chew. It is not hunger that moves my jaws, but necessity. I fear the scarcity of food, the impermanence of things. Do you know that only objects can understand the intimacy of this fear? This kind of understanding happens the moment before consumption. Look away long enough from the image of teeth closing around you.
The world is nothing but a snow globe about to burst.
WORLD 3
I am celebrating another Christmas with you. In this life, we have a sad apartment, with a plastic tree the size of three hands and a pinky. We do not have enough money to pay the electric bill for Christmas lights, and instead, hang glowsticks against the dusty ceiling. I bring you a gift, and like a routine, you rip the wrapping paper mechanically. Tomorrow, you are gone.
WORLD 2
We are watching the beginning of sunset together. There is no need for colored lights. This Christmas has forgotten the snow. It is warm and in the seventies outside, an impossible weather. An impossible scene. Isn’t the point of a snow globe to hold impossible things? Shake the glass, and maybe it can capture the impermanency of the swirling snow, again and again and again—
WORLD 1
The door of the elementary school classroom bursts open.
Out! the teacher screams. Out! Out!
The snowing skies shake with terrible urgency. The wind howls. You are so close that I can count the speckles in your eyes. It is curious that the greediest people are the most unafraid. Our faces touch, just as the windows shatter, and the snow comes crashing through and sweeps everything away.
In every world, I tell you that there is yellow mixed into the gray of your eyes. The same color as golden coins, and the beginning of sunsets, and me. Yellow means all temporary things. You’ve always had an eye for what fades away. Like the sweetness from the end of summer, when the sun leaves, and the warm air touches your skin and promises to love it one last time.
WORLD ?
I learned to be (un)wrapped from a young age. We sit in front of a Christmas tree. The carpet is soft, and I am quiet. The entire room is filled with discarded paper wrappers and strewn ribbons. You place a gentle finger under the tip of my chin and push my head up. My gift, you say tenderly. I am shivering. I see the yellow in your eyes. You press your lips on my forehead: Light and sweet, just like I am supposed to be before I disintegrate completely—
just like how you always vanish, within every world I’ve known you in.
Writer | Sarah Wu ’25 | sdwu25@amherst.edu
Editor | Gabby Avena ’25 | gavena25@amherst.edu