Yvanna Vien Tica
The Beachfront Water Park
AFTER MARIANNE CHAN
My parents refused to see the ocean. I slipped into the slide headfirst. I wore a green swimsuit from Ross that was too big for my breasts. My sister had warned me that the kiddie pool was warm with pee, and she doesn’t lie. I mean, she didn’t lie when she told me I slipped into the family just in time for the haunting. I wore my older brother’s baby clothes because my parents couldn’t get rid of them. They were too big for my arms, but I’m told I laughed like any other baby. My parents only trusted pools. Then I wore a green swimsuit in the Ross changing room and decided to taste something other than chlorine. I mean, that was before I knew the water park tasted like pee; they restricted the beach area because of stray jellyfish. Then I slipped into the slide and emerged with bruises and a bleeding chin. A boy helped me out of the water, and I pretended he was my older brother with all the ghosts erased. He led me to the emergency area and flirted with my sister while handing me a towel too big for my shoulders, so I left them. I slipped past the warning sign on the beach. I wore a green swimsuit, so it wasn’t like I was hard to find. I stole a handful of the ocean and slipped it into my mouth without checking for jellyfish. It tasted like puréed Lay’s potato chips. I found my parents by a stray towel on the beach, pretending. It wasn’t like my parents didn’t care; they only saw a lifeguard flirting, then a body in the ocean. I watched the water turn green with jellyfish. I slipped into their arms and laughed like any other ghost. They only saw the ocean, my brother.
Yvanna Vien Tica is a Filipina writer with a hearing impairment who grew up in Manila and a suburb near Chicago. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and Salt Hill, among others. She reads for Muzzle Magazine, tweets @yvannavien, and will attend Yale in the fall. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying nature and thanking God for another day.