I open my eyes. The incense stick has burned down to a gray worm.
They don’t tell you that a temple is just a wound that learned to grow gold leaf. pee mak temple
So she stayed.
The Wound of the Wat
They say her husband, Mak, returned from the war with his four friends. They say he didn’t know she had died in childbirth. That he slept beside her ghost for weeks, cradling a corpse that cooked his rice and laughed at his jokes. When he finally knew the truth, he ran. And she followed. Across the canal, over the bridge, into the temple itself. I open my eyes