Excerpt from Cecilia by K-Ming Chang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She itched her wrist, dredging up flecks of dried skin. She used to say she would someday scatter her own ashes. The impossibility of this act only strengthened the promise. Many times in my life, I had seen someone across the street or out the bus window, scraping plaque off the roots of their kumquat tree or laughing open mouthed at a flippant cloud or frothing from both nostrils while arguing with a stranger, and the way they were moving their hands and arms—with a fledgling's awkwardness, elbows crooking like wings—disturbed me into indigestion. Only much later would I realize: my sickness was the shock of seeing her shadow appropriated, her behavior plagiarized.

You look the same, she said. Her voice was lower. She glanced down, and it was the first time I realized she was uncertain about how to address me. She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, and I watched it ripple and shine with spit, the slug of my love.

I'll change, she said, I just really like this room.

I was surprised. The room was so familiar to me I no longer saw anything in it—it was too staged, shaped like a room but not a room, the poster of a seaside view on one wall, the green glass lamp in the corner, the filters combing out the air. Only the motored table remained alive in my mind. I tried to imagine her magnetized to it, her body flung in elliptical orbits, her knees bouncing on the cushions. But when I thought of her lying on the table face down, I could only see her steering it, paddling it out into the day.

Cecilia turned around, ushering the scent of her sweat into the air, the loose curtains of her gown fluttering open in the back. Her skin was so sudden. The white elastic of her underwear, bare as bone, snapped against my throat. I recoiled and scurried out the door, the walls of the narrow hallway grating my shoulders, whittling me down. Behind me, I heard the door scraping shut.

My heart wrung itself out, and I felt the blood return to my wrists and hands and head. Two more knocks on the laundry room door, two more rooms cleared out, and treatment room two was still shut. No light sludging out the crack of its door, but I didn't want to knock, so I waited until the receptionist let me know that room two needed getting. When I returned to it, I saw that the door was indeed cracked, but so slightly that only a thumb would fit in the gap. That was how she defined an opening.

I cleaned the room slower than usual, searching for a raft of stray hairs or some message she'd left for me. I even checked the ceiling. It would have never occurred to me to do this, except Cecilia used to enter a room with her chin tilted upward, pining for light. But when I looked up, I only saw shadows. Spores speckled the ceiling, fuzzing the light fixture. Repulsed, I lowered my head and knew I would never be able to enter this room again without thinking of the pelt above, thickening by the minute, begging to be petted. Even as I shuddered, I imagined stroking the spores: a row of nipples stiffening.

No message was left behind for me. Only the pile of used towels on the table, the gown flickering on top of it, stirred slightly by the air-conditioning. The gown's fabric was starchy, the way the chiropractor preferred it, soft only at the armpits and around the neckline, where her sweat and heat might have congregated. I balled it up and tucked it under my left arm, then bundled the towels to bring to the laundry room. When I got back, I sorted only the towels into their correct hampers. The gown I tossed onto the folding table behind me, where the clean laundry was stacked into obelisks. Though I turned my back to the gown, I felt its presence cleaving to me, felt its sleeve holes whimpering for my wrists.

After stacking a load of dry towels, still hot enough to scald my fingertips, I turned back to the gown and lifted it, my nose roaming the fabric. It was bright as the leaf-brittle dryer sheets we used, even at the armpits. I tried to decide if the side seams were damp or just cold. I fluttered the gown flat on the table, looked around quickly, and bent to lick its loins. Like a bird chewing dew, my tongue dabbed at the diamonds patterning the crotch. The cloth was so devoid of flavor that it didn't even taste clean: it was simply the fabric of absence. It hadn't lived long enough on her skin to remember anything.

Excerpted from Cecilia by K-Ming Chang. Copyright © 2024 by K-Ming Chang. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.