Elena Zhang
Ghost Nebula
On the night your space shuttle launches, I walk outside to my backyard and tilt my head heavenward. I imagine seeing the stellar nurseries glowing pink and red, pulsing with newborn stars, as heavy as my love for you, as weightless as your nebulous body will soon be. You were once so small, just clumps of dust gathering together to spin a gravity. How I wish I could still see the shimmering past, the twinkling of your laughter. I run my fingers over my belly, still marked with the ridges and craters of your arrival. You told me not to worry, but I just shook my head and smiled. That’s what mothers do, I said. I think of my own mother up there, a neutron star bursting into radio waves. And then I hear it. That faint lullaby. The song I hummed to you as you slept in your crib, a song I sing to you now, one billion years old.
Elena Zhang
Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD, The Citron Review, and Flash Frog, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and was selected for Best Microfiction 2024 and 2025.