Pandora's Ink Digital Magazine

Written by Alvin Su from Louisiana, USA I Remembrance - 缅怀  Monday, June 26th, 2023, Taipei   Accompanied by my father, we landed in Taiwan under a soft, grey sky. The air, thick with the smell of rain, clung to our clothes as if it too remembered things better left forgotten.   The old days are woven in like a piece of brocade with faded patches here and there,  certain memories now unclear and worn out. As I stood, the wind whispered through the willow trees like a gentle l

Written by Eric Li from Texas, USA The first time Grandma disabled Mom’s petunia sprinkler system, I thought it was a betrayal of...

Written by Lauren Zheng from Canada “Stop talking, young lady, or you’ll be out in the hall.” That’s my first memory of you, terror of the second-graders. I was sitting on a lint-covered blue carpet with the others. (Except the carpet wasn’t quite blue, and I wasn’t quite with them.) You were watching us make paper stars.  (My paper wouldn’t fold the right way, my star deflating and crooked.) I was terrified of you. (I was terrified of being less than them.) But my mom forced

Written by Iris Zhu from California, USA One blazing summer after the school year ended, I left America and returned to my mother's hometown in Changsha, China. Along the Xiang River and capital of the Hunan Province, Changsha comes from a Mandarin word meaning “a long sandy place,” and it is average-sized. In China, this means around 10 million inhabitants. The city is known for its local, spicy cuisine and small, meandering alleyways teaming with bustling stores and restaur

Written by Eric Wu from Washington, USA My father’s hands shook, struggling to hold the bouquet of impeccably red roses in full bloom. He hoped that the sharp, thorny flowers could act as a needle and stitch up the hole in his heart.  I followed closely behind, holding a transparent turquoise ring neatly tucked into its velvet cushion, ready to initiate the handoff just as we had meticulously perfected the day before.  My heart pounded as the plan of my own orchestration had