Maureen Tai (@maureentai.com)

'A Tropical Winter' by Maureen Tai We stand around the big white box. It’s humming softly but I can hardly hear it over my pounding heart. My lips are dry, like my throat. Marianne steps on my foot. We giggle and squirm. Margot shoots us angry looks. Her parents named her after a famous dancer, but no one speaks French, so instead, we call her Maggot. She’s the only one in the whole school who has touched real snow. She slides the glass doors open. “Your whole head goes inside, okay?” We stand on tiptoe and bend full forward, our faces smarting from the bursts of cold clouds. I hold my breath like I’m underwater. I look at the dead fish, the huddled-together prawns, the slabs of frozen meat. I close my eyes and try to imagine a snowman. He has a woolly hat and a carrot nose. Marianne, or perhaps Wei Li, yanks my arm. “Someone’s coming!” Squealing, we turn and run out of the supermarket into the tropical heat, our flip-flops stopping only once we reach the playground. “THAT’S what it’s like,” Maggot says smugly, as I cup my hands to my still icy cheeks, breathlessly savouring the last traces of my first winter. --- Maureen Tai is an award-winning Malaysian writer living in Hong Kong with published creative works in literary and online magazines such as Cha, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kyoto Journal, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Porch Lit Magazine and the Hooghly Review. Primarily writing for children and teens, she has published short stories for children with Oxford University Press and Marshall Cavendish (Asia). Maureen’s work and book reviews can be found at www.maureentai.com. Her time as the Program Director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2023 is the highlight of her literary career to date. http://dlvr.it/TLLc1f