GG Lam

Sofia Lam carves netsuke above her family's old pawnshop, up to a year on a single figure smaller than her thumb, in boxwood and bone for collectors who wait and are told nothing about when. She never plays the last game of an evening. When the division thins out and one match is left on the board she has already gone, and nobody has heard a reason for it, because nobody has been given one. She is slow at the board in the way the work is slow. The position is settled before the hand moves, the cube goes over only when it is unarguable and a direct question gets the shortest true sentence available.