Your aunt, Mealea, was such a sweet child. By the age of five, she’d greet guests as soon as they came to the door, offering them a plate of rambutan and mangosteen before they even had a chance to sit down. She’d set the table and sweep the dining room without ever complaining. She was so different from your mother–timid, never the type to question authority. Her favorite food was noum kong, a traditional Khmer version of a donut. The main differences are that it looks more like a big onion ring and it’s covered in sesame seeds. We made some every year for her birthday. She was about ten when the troops raided the town for the first time, soldiers marching through the streets, bearing AK-47s. I held onto your Yeh Yeh and Mealea with everything in me, her little hand, knotted up in mine. We pushed our way through the crowd, screams flooding our ears and the sounds of gunshots reverberating in the distance. Somewhere in the flurry of things, I lost her. I hadn’t noticed till we’d already escaped. After the soldiers had moved elsewhere, we searched all over for her, unsure if we would find our daughter or a corpse. Finding no one and nothing was far worse. I cried an ocean and a half, the tears crashing down my cheeks in waves, as a chasm the size of a black hole filled my belly. Your Yeh Yeh, on the other hand, made herself into a mountain. She knew we had to keep going or we were all going to die. After we fled to Thailand, we ran into one of our neighbors, Samnang, who told us that he’d seen Mealea a few weeks earlier. She stood amongst a group of children and soldiers, her face caked in dirt as she kneeled to the ground to place a circular landmine in a hole she had dug before covering it back up. When he understood what was happening, Samnang couldn’t keep his terror in and gasped. She looked up and pointed at him, sending the soldiers to chase him down and open fire, but he managed to escape with only a few grazes. That was the last time anyone saw her alive. It’s been decades since then, and yet the chasm in my belly is still there.
Maya Cheav is the author of the poetry chapbooks LYKAIA (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and TAN’S DONUTS (Chestnut Review, 2025). Her poems and flash fiction have been featured in Stone of Madness, ALOCASIA, Scapegoat Review, The Weaver, Across the Margin, and elsewhere. Her work has received a Best Small Fictions Nomination. She was a top 10 finalist for the 2023 Palette Poetry Chapbook Prize, guest judged by Danez Smith, as well as a 2024 Tin House Workshop alum, under the faculty mentorship of Roy G. Guzmán. She is a 2024-2025 Collections of Transience poet in residence.
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