wordplay

i’ve been reading a lot, lately. i’m talking multiple books in the span of just a few weeks, which is the most i’ve read during the past year. i think it’s funny (not in the ha-ha way) that it took a pandemic and a lot of time spent indoors for me to rekindle the childlike wonder i hold for the written word, for the way that i can walk into and imagine entire worlds shaped by the ink of authors who have already done the same thing during the process of their writing. 

reading is an inherently reflective exercise for me, as i’m the kind of person who’s always thinking about how a piece of writing reverberates with my state of being and state of mind and about my relationship to the text. reading is also a strongly nostalgic activity for me, as the period of time during which i spent proportionally the most time reading was when i was much younger.

today, i went on a walk, a daily practice for me after coming back to my mother’s home. it has been raining on and off for the past couple days, but the sun came out today and the woods held the memory of rain, small patches of moisture dotting the paths and the smell of earthy musk permeating the air. i was doing that thing where i was thinking about everything and nothing at the same time, and i think the nostalgia i've been nursing while reading so much caused me to remember another smell, similar but very different -- i remembered my father’s old work gloves, the ones i don whenever i (very, very occasionally now) go into my mother’s backyard to do something or other in the soil. they hold the smell of dried earth and evaporated sweat, and i love them because they remind me of warmth and sunshine, of my father and his connection to the earth. they remind me of the garden my parents dug and tended back in florida, full of trailing vines and budding vegetables, seeded from packets they had brought back from china. the new owners of that house tore the garden down and replaced it with a swimming pool. 

generally, i’ve been spending a lot of time inside my head these days. i attribute this primarily to living with my mother -- i flew back to spend what was supposed to be my spring break with my brother, who was returning to my mother’s house after getting kicked off his college campus, and then shelter-in-place started, and i’ve been here for more than a month now. being in this space is at once wonderful and terrible. it is wonderful because i haven’t been in portland during springtime in many years, and i forgot how truly awe-inspiring (and nose-itching) it is to see the flowers in all their glory in the northwest. i’ve spent too much time in california this past year, it seems, and i didn’t know until now that my soul was thirsting for the lush grass and vibrant blooms that are so common in portland. it is terrible because my mother’s house, as well as close proximity to my mother, made extreme by the restrictions of shelter-in-place, dredges up a lot of conflict and anger and memory that i had assumed were past me. but of course trauma never works that way, and trauma edges itself into words laced too tight, into hands raised high, into clenched teeth and averted gazes. 

so all of this is causing me to spent a lot of time inside my head, and some of it is good, and some of it is bad, and some of it just is. 

all this time without physical contact with my community and my chosen family have also forced me to rethink intimacy. who do i spend time with, and how do i spend time with them? how do all these things change without being able to hold people in my arms? i miss tender touches and the way being with people in person lets you see them smile with their eyes. i miss liquid courage and the way my friends can make me feel like i’m invincible. i miss loving love and feeling free(r). i am alone and steadily becoming lonely. i miss sex and touching people! 

the past few weeks have also forced me to really look privilege in the eye; this is the first time i’ve written a long-form piece since i started medical school, and i know deep down that it’s because i’ve been afraid of what a thoughtful level of scrutiny would turn up. even before i started medical school i knew that stanford is very much a similar kind of beast that duke was -- an institution aligned with empire and with its power -- but i’ve been avoiding the work that i needed to do in really examining my relationship to empire and the consequences of my decision to attend this institution. this has been especially relevant during the past few weeks as i’ve watched the structures of power around the world and in the united states (or what it is really is: unceded Native land) crumble while also struggle desperately try to prop themselves up. i’m watching as capitalism implodes upon itself and people scramble to take care of themselves and their loved ones, and i’m also watching as it reimagines itself by using the bodies of the most oppressed among us as collateral damage.

i’ve been thinking about how stanford in general, and the stanford hospital system in particular, align with these observations. there is irony that is not lost on me. i notice that my privilege as a medical student compounds with my access to a (mostly) stable shelter-in-place location as well as my guarantee of world-class care should i fall sick to assure me that I’ll probably come out of this alive and not too worse for wear, all in contrast with how there are groups of people that are systematically excluded from medical care at stanford, and how these groups have been disproportionately affected by covid-19, and how the reason why they are disproportionately affected in the first place is because of the structures of power that refuse to let go.

and, of course, i have to return to my positionality as a medical student. i’ve been thinking a lot about how i mostly knew what i was getting into when i accepted the offer of admission at a place like this -- that is, how i knew that i was outwardly aligning myself with an empire-imbued institution, built from and continuing to profit off of the systemic exploitation and exclusion of the bodies least valued by the empire. i’ve been thinking a lot about how i went into all of this with the idea that i could utilize my positionality to make change in a system that resists any sort of revolutionary instinct... but at the same time, isn’t this the same sort of rhetoric that i roll my eyes at when, say, folks who go into finance say that they’ll “change the system from the inside?” i am wondering how the way the empire forces my hand in choosing survival within the system will influence me as i continue. i am wondering how much more/less/the same change i could meaningfully make if i declined the offer of admission and my spot in the class went to someone who is anti-abortion and believes in a gender binary, among other things (and i know of people at the medical school who believe these things!). 

dream-plane

last night, we talked about dreams: when you’re there, who do you become? how do you move? how do you live? 

i was unprepared when it happened. i remember stepping outside for a walk and mourning that the sky was gray, a hazy expanse promising rain and the potential for sunshine. i remember noticing that there was something wrong -- it felt like a sudden change in the air, maybe, or a muffling of the birdsong around me, or a dampening of the crisp wind against my face. i remember panic erupting into delighted peals of laughter inside my chest as my face stretched tight across my bones and my thoughts took a half-step away from my mind, encouraging me to shepherd them into the self i inhabit when i dream.

i am terrified of tipping sideways into the dream-plane. if i had a faith, my doctrine would be this: that there is a firm line between this side of reality and the other one, and that i am in full control of how and when i step between those realms. this is an assurance that i traded for in long nights and fresh blood and hundred-watt smiles until the debt was considered paid.

but i have not yet unlearned my tendency to attach memory to space and emotion to memory, and the space that i’m currently passing through breathes life into emotions that are at once wonderful and terrible. there is wonder because i haven’t been to this city during springtime in many years, and i had forgotten that it is possible for my soul to thirst for color in this way. there is terror because my mother’s house holds ghosts of conflict and anger and memory that i had assumed were past me, and tension wedges itself into words laced too tight, into hands raised high, into clenched teeth and always-looking-away.

these days i am privileged to have a roof over my head and a hot meal to eat most nights. these days i am struggling to fit my selves in all their soft-sided many-dimensioned glory into a rigid single-axis body. sometimes my faith doesn’t feel like enough as i wield it against my mother’s raging conviction, her gospel about the person i am and will become. many evenings i think of the parallel universe that holds my dream-self and their irreverent body and their irreverent lover and their ir/reverent mother in the same simultaneous space. many evenings i think about how sinking back into my native tongue feels like homecoming but also like a rejection of the self i have come to love. many evenings i think about how i miss the freedom of allowing my selves to embrace my people at all hours of the day. 

but. i remain on my knees and bump noses with the future. i hold hope because of my people. these are my anchors: the people who help me remember that there are things about myself to love, the people who understand my absence, the people who sit with me in silence, the people who send time and love and presence to me over the airwaves, the people who teach me how to dream of liberation in all its embodied forms, for my self and every other irreverent body. 

healing

sometimes i don’t really know how to talk to you. i often tell people who know a little bit about our relationship that “we’re working on it, things are getting better, it’s hard but it’s getting better.” which is true, no doubt. there are ways you’ve softened over the years: you’ve learned to say “i love you,” you’ve learned the beginnings of apologies, you’ve learned to laugh with me at the parts of life that sometimes we can’t do anything about but to watch with disbelief.

but i think it’s nights like this when i’m reminded of how volatile you still are. your anger is a terrifying thing, always has been, always teetering on the edge of an exhale, always a few words away during a phonecall. sometimes i don’t really know why it is that i’m always so tired after we talk on the phone, but nights like this teach me again that it’s because i never know whether laughter or anger will greet me through the speakerphone. 

i’ve cried more times than i can count on my fingers in the past two weeks. two of those times were with financial aid counselors, two men i don’t know, when i admitted that i’m homeless and low-income and escaping an abusive family relationship. my trauma is hard to explain, always, always, always. how do i say that i still go home sometimes but that it doesn’t often feel like a home and that i’ve been kicked out before? how do i say that nights like this are the nights when my financial stability seesaws in tandem with your anger? how do i talk about these things when family itself is such a constructed thing, when i’m over 18 and technically have the freedom to leave, but when i’m also tied to you in ways that feel irrevocable and inescapable, in ways that tie me to you over our shared grief and codependency? how do i talk about these things when there are things about me i will (can) never, never tell you because i’m so scared, when there’s a part of me that has never even considered telling you these things because i am terrified of the fallout? 

i’ve been reading some pieces my friends have written about the warmth of family, the many myriad unspoken ways our family members often express their love for us. and you’ve given me that, i know. the way you cook some of my favorite foods when i do go home, the way you worry and hover about my safety when i travel, the way you text sometimes when you haven’t heard from me in a while. but i think about how this warmth is always tinged with red: bright, burning, painful red. i can’t think of this warmth without thinking about the bruises, the blood, the searing heat outside on the day you told me that you don’t believe in “unconditional love,” that you don’t believe in “free love” that i don’t have to repay, that i owe you for whatever it is we have between us. i don’t know how much of this is true and how much of this is untrue; filial piety gets twisted in all the wrong ways, sometimes, and i know in some ways i do owe you everything, but also that in some ways i owe you nothing. and really, there’s so much i don’t know, might not ever know. 

what i do know is that each time i talk about my trauma i have to relive it. (i really need to go to therapy...) the phone conversations i had with strangers today and yesterday poked at a lot of tender wounds that i thought had, if not healed, at least scabbed over. but they still pulse when touched, they still sting when prodded, and each of these soft, hurting spots connects to all the other soft, hurting spots that remind me of you and everything we’ve been through. i always wonder if love is something than can still exist as love when it’s pierced through with so many jagged edges. healing is a word that, sometimes, feels as strange and foreign to me as it was when i was at my worst. but i know i’ve come this far, and i guess hope is a word that i should continue to hold close to my heart, however contrived it is.

hand-holding

an always-being-rewritten list of moments i remember:

the night you died holding your hand at wild adventures, looking up reading a book on the floor of my room while you sat at my desk and surfed the web and drank the green smoothie thing you had to drink watching you play neverwinter nights (”encumbered”) that math competition recording yourself reading stories patting me until i fell asleep, and also how i’d wriggle around to wake you up if you fell asleep before me expletives in chinese when mom was on vacation for a conference and you had to cook, and you salted the soup twice and the cabbage never shoveling snow when we had the big snowstorm that year

inhale

(framing) a series of meetings and re-meetings, love and honesty bravely given and received, and shared strength and resilience

you ever think about how the world around you is like... always giving you a hug? she asked one night, hands cupping a warm mug of tea. no, not really, that sounds suffocating, and also things are sometimes too shitty to feel like the world is giving me a hug, i said. but she insisted: it’s about the framing, just think about it harder. okay, so like... the way the sun curves around the silhouettes of the people i love, or the way our shared stories bump up fondly against each other when they intertwine, or the way people often enter into those stories at just the right time? sure, those are a few, and like, you ever think about how there are so many people around us who still learn and laugh and love and resist even when things are shitty? fuck, yeah, you’re right, there’s a holiness in that kind of strength.

(introspecting) a series of re-re-re-centering, deep breaths, and not nearly enough sleep

i like to feel the silence slip and seep between my fingers and through the spaces between shoulders. my bones often dance underneath my too-tight skin, stretching. sometimes i watch the red numbers on my alarm clock mark the time toward or away from midnight, and i think about how maybe i’ll heal soon, this time, i swear, this time or maybe this time tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. 

(recollecting) a series of hasty decisions and temporary pinpricks, laughter-full moments, and consumption of sugar  

i’ve been told that memories disappear like rain on sidewalks, slowly but when you least expect them. that they evaporate like dreams upon waking, except on a longer timescale, days months years instead of seconds. i’ve started keeping a dream journal lately, writing down the whispers of the muffled stories i witness in my dreams. years ago i used to lucid dream, full-on stereophonic surround-sound, technicolor madness at my beck and call. i only recently started to dream in color again. i’ve been waking up to the intake of breath right before speech. i’m hoping that willing into existence the fragments of my journeys in the dream-plane i can move freely there again. i wonder what this says about memories in the realm of consciousness. 

reclaiming

TO all the boys, girls, humans i’ve loved before: 

it’s a common mistake i make, thinking that, somehow,  because sometimes my heart feels larger than the ocean, because sometimes the breath presses so hard against my lungs that i want to share it with someone else, because i feel so much, so much of the time, i can handle pouring myself out into so many different cups, filling them up to the brim, surface tension quivering until the last drop spills over. 

tonight’s one of those nights when i’m running on empty,  the temperature having finally taken a turn for real, crisp, cool, sweater weather fall weather, and when i walk around i wrap my arms tighter around myself because i don’t have another set of arms to do the same -  i turned on my tea light, tonight, so i can sit in the dark and listen to music and wear only a light long-sleeve tee so that i’m cold but not too cold, and my bones dance underneath my too-tight skin. 

i think of the most recent person i spent the night with, a boy  who is a transfer from another school, a boy who came over one late night at 3am and talked to me about  his family, his mother, my family, my mother,  and hugged me tight under the covers at 4am, snored lightly and woke me up  at 7am, woke up himself at 11am, left me at 12pm. 

i fall too hard, too fast, and i always feel like kicking myself, but in the same way you kind of want to pat a little kid on the head when  you see them drop their ice cream, ice-cream-first, onto the pavement.  i never really know better, not really, and sometimes i’ll watch the  red numbers on my alarm clock mark the time toward or away from midnight, and i think about how i’ll be over it soon, this time, i swear, this time or maybe  this time tomorrow. i know i’m touch-starved. most nights i’m okay being alone,  and i have my own hands, and frankly my own hands know me the best,  know how to hold myself in the right ways, in the right moments, carve out  a place for myself in the recesses of my bed. all this to say that i think i still love all of you, in different ways, in some ways, even if i know my love has long since spilled onto the tabletop and been wiped away. water is everywhere, in the air we breathe, in the tears we cry, in the dried-up tissues tossed into the garbage, erasing the physical traces of our messes. i miss you all! come love me again sometime. 

seventeen

17 is a good number, i think. i like prime numbers. 

17 is in the crowd of numbers but it’s still alone. no numbers are a part of it.  17 is the number of dandelions i picked last week in the grassy field behind my  brother’s old elementary school. july 17 is the birthday of a girl i’ve known since 7th grade, and she’s had a couple of breakdowns and boyfriends since then. 

2 + 15 = 17

two is the only even prime number, and 15 is the product of the next two: three and five. 17 is the number of tylenol pills in an orange bottle i hid under a suitcase in my closet last winter: just in case.

it’s also, if i remember correctly, the number of people in front of me when i was at oaks park this past june with my best friend who was moving to texas the next month. 

17 days later i was on vacation in china, emailing her pictures and wishing her an early happy birthday from across the pacific ocean. 

17 is the sum of any number of pairs of numbers, but not a single pair of primes will sum to it.  17 is the number of mint-flavored cookies i baked with my brother last christmas, minus the one i ate and the two he devoured. 

i was born in 1980 plus 17 years, december 22, which was 17 days too early, if you ask me.

postcards

kindergarten.

妈妈， 我不想上学啊，好烦。今天在课上老师叫我上去拼一个英文单词，我不会，在哪儿呆呆的站了一会儿就回座位了。同学们肯定在笑我。 在美国真不好玩，我想吃婆婆做的饭啊，好喜欢婆婆做的叶儿粑，咸烧白，爷爷做的鱼香茄子。妈妈你从爷爷那边学会做鱼香茄子了吗？ 还有上次爸爸在南京带我去吃的小笼包子，好好吃。我记得奶奶爷爷和我们一起去的，好好玩，好热闹。吃完了我们去吃了咸水鸭，也很好吃，不过吃了一会儿就很腻。 不过中国的公共厕所很恶心，这个我很讨厌。臭臭的，我也不习惯蹲着上厕所，好奇怪。这个方面上还是美国好。 爱， 牛牛 

middle school.

Mom,  Why do you force me to learn Chinese? People at school think it’s weird. Someone called me an Asian piece of shit last week, and I was scared. What does that even mean? I don’t understand why learning Chinese is such a big deal. It’s so boring, and also it’s not like I’m going to ever use it... It’s America, mom. We speak English!! The only person I talk to in Chinese is you and our grandparents. Not like I’ll ever have to write or read things in Chinese, ever. Why bother?  - A__ P.S. PLEASE can you buy me school lunch? I don’t get why you bring me cold lunch every day. Everyone else buys school lunch!!!

high school.

妈妈， why can't you understand? 总是觉得你不懂我的心情，我的情绪。你只担心我的成绩和在学校的表现，我的感受难道不重要吗？为什么？ 上个礼拜你看到了我手腕上的伤痕，你吼了一番，又打了我。你说，“你那么想死，你敢的话就自杀啊”。 你说，“depression isn't real”。 你说的也许是对的吧，前几个礼拜我把楼下的 tylenol 偷偷地藏到我的衣柜里了，那天晚上准备吃的时候还是发现下不了手，因为我不敢留下弟弟一个人，孤孤单单的，没了爸爸没了姐姐我怕他太难受。 我最近晚上睡不着觉，一直哭。好想爸爸。好想离开这里。 我已经长大了，你为什么还要控制我的每一个行为？你知不知道我和弟弟很怕你？上次你把弟弟打的他腿上全是蓝色绿色紫色，我帮他冰敷的时候他一直在哭。我很为难，不知道该怎么办。为什么，妈妈？ - A__

college.

妈妈， 爸爸不在了，你孤单吗？家人在国内，你孤单吗？你在异乡待了这么多年，习惯吗？婆婆爷爷老了，你怕吗？ 你孤单吗？ 我有好多东西想问你。我有很多东西想和你谈谈，因为我对你的故事，你的经历，真的很不了解：关于你小时候的故事，关于你和爸爸谈恋爱的故事，关于你来美国的故事。 这些东西我们最近确实是谈了一点点，但是我们中间还是有很多分叉，尤其是关于我们俩个中间隔的时代和文化的问题。我记得我上次回波特兰的时候，我们吵得最凶的一次是关于同性恋，police brutality，affirmative action。你觉得我的想法太 liberal，不对，不好。那天晚上我们俩个都哭了。我不知道为什么你哭了，但是我哭的原因是我本以为我们俩个能跨过我们之间的gap，能多交流，能让你看到我身为一个 asian american 在美国的身份、经历、针扎，但是你没有给我那个机会。也许我们俩个之间的分裂虽然在某些方面已经治愈好了，但在某些方面还是没有办法 reconcile。 我记得最近你和我说过我不是一个 chinese american。你说我必须选���当中国人或者当美国人，没有中间地。我不知道以后有没有办法和你沟通，让你看到我对自己的身份的 understanding。我是一个生在 diaspora 当中的一个孩子；我从小就在面对这方面上的问题和纠结。  妈妈，我很喜欢听你给我讲的故事。在我对自己的身份的探索过程中，我发现自己有一种对 chinese-ness 的渴望。也许是因为我在美国一直被看为一个 perpetual foreigner，也许是因为我从来没有过一个与家人很亲密的关系（家人都在国内嘛）。总觉得你的故事能填补我心中的一种空虚。 不过这不够。还是有很多重要的东西我讲不出来。我很怕把我自己的故事讲给你听。我怕再次提起我以后我不想当一个纯粹的医生，想 serve underprivileged communities，想做 health equity 方面的工作，你会再次骂我。我怕我告诉你我不是异性恋，你真的会把我彻彻底底赶出家门。我怕踏出这一步。 我也知道你这些年很不容易，也不想添加麻烦。对不起。  love, A__

clean

my first time having sex was a messy thing -  first of all, i’ve never found much utility, personally, in defining “sex”  as an act that necessarily involves penetration  (after all, i have had romantic partners in life who have…  simply not possessed the body parts necessary to “penetrate” me  in the typical, heterosexual sense of things)  

the other thing is that i also don’t like  messy i don’t like it when other people sit on my bed in dirty clothes i don’t like it when i sit on my bed in dirty clothes i don’t like it when my body gets sticky or sweaty or smelly in any sense of those words

i don’t like it when my body is attached to someone else i don’t like getting attached to someone else

(i was also bored, and lonely, and i think many things combined in a way that meant i was ready to make an impulsive decision above and beyond what i usually make)

we met up at a days inn, and the weather was really just... shit  rain and wind and bone-chill cold but we cranked the heat up high in that small hotel (motel? inn?) room and turned off all the lights  and all in all it was  manageable

he was a good kisser and i liked that,  the intimacy  the way he stopped when i asked  the way he laughed when i laughed

but of course it’s never that easy  and my brain likes to go into overdrive  and so there he was, pushing into me,  and i’m lying there thinking about how guttural his grunts (moans?) sound  thinking about all the saliva i’m going to have to ease out of my body afterwards thinking about where exactly my underwear bra pants shirt fell to earlier

i took a wet towel to my body afterwards and cleaned up as best i could  before putting on my dirty clothes (picked them one by one from the floor, couch,  between the soggy sheets)  and the rest of the day was nothing more and nothing less than  messy

i smelled like spit-slick and a little like wet dog  a little less like myself and a little more like someone else  i think i’m still processing what it all means and who i still am  and how i’ve changed (if i’ve changed at all)  and if i am going to get attached and all those things scare me more than the risk and impulse behind everything i did that day 

skies

made a pinky promise with the dusty sky

put a mask over the clouds dotting your horizons put a stop to the wind breezing through your cracks

you’re the best idea I’ve ever had i’ll still swear it up and down even if the sky’s the only one to hear me 

words

我的母语像个母亲 把我留在外面淋雨的母亲 吃饭不跟我说话的母亲 爱不爱  有没有爱 不得不爱的母亲

you’re like my mother tongue  a cadence i can’t sink into a language an ocean away

always at the tip of my tongue fumbling at the corners of my mouth  a pill i can’t figure out how to swallow a thread of logic i don’t know how to follow

stuck in my throat a sentence i can’t get out  unless it’s in the little pieces  that i’ll pick up from the floor  tonight 

insecurities

Let me love you the way you won’t love yourself.

You dug yourself a hole that’s deeper than you are tall  (and trust me, when you stand in the doorway, the hallway light shining behind you, your silhouette is quite frankly breathtaking),  that’s wider than the space between your breaths at night, when you’ve finally eased into a place that lets you breathe. 

I don’t want to dig you out. Not if that’s not what you want. But at least let me be there with you. Let me carve pictures into the dirt surrounding you. Let me be the one to cave you in.  

snowfall

drinking champagne from your coffee mug  breathe on me with me  lean into me 

light me up 

walked in the snow today  white seeped into my frayed black canvas shoes  felt the silence inside outside in your footsteps never disappeared so fast 

last night i watched the snow fall  clumped outside our windowsill streetlights almost light, completely white  kissed the drops of water between your eyelashes

reflection (i)

When I was younger, I never really understood why my identity was constantly conflated into a single narrative of what people who “looked like me” were supposed to do and think and be. I often found myself lost in these stereotypes, wondering why my reality was so vastly different from what people assumed about me. My coming-of-age story is rough around the edges: it is one of violence, death, pain, but it is also one interspersed with moments of immense joy and hope. Rarely, if at all, however, was I given the space to explore these intricacies; more often, I was boxed into a false construction of my own life, scrabbling at the corners and trying to stitch myself together from the fragments of what I was told about myself. 

I have, on occasion, been asked why I am so interested in people’s stories, why I am so hell-bent on getting to know people on a level deeper than the typical coffee chat allows. It is because in recent years I have begun to understand and harness the power of stories and narratives as a way to cut through the tired assumptions people hold about “others,” as a way to inject truth and life into the process of how we come to know the people around us. I am here, holding tightly to the bits and pieces of the stories that people tell me, because after a lifetime of collecting the bits and pieces of truth about myself I know how precious those things are. 

I am here because I am a fervent believer in the holiness of people’s journeys. 

I am here because I strive for a day when each person’s story is one that they, and only they, can tell.

And everyone will listen.

green

learning that it was okay for me to take up space used to be as foreign as my mother was the day she stepped from the first airplane she had ridden onto a ground that shook with the determination of her steps  into a country that would continue to see her as  well, as a foreigner, always a stranger who was never more than the clipped english that spilled from her lips,  from the mouth of a woman who 

demanded only the best from customer service agents who spoke impatiently to her over the phone haggled with home repair men who thought they could  get away with charging her more  had a tongue that could lash you ten ways to hell in two different languages

she was one of the most talented kids in her classes when she was younger excelled at everything except physics painted better than her older brother jumped higher than most kids during p.e. class 

“your mom’s name is pronounced CHING? that’s so funny!” a kid said to me, once, in that innocently cruel way  that children often speak and then he ran off to tell all the other kids on the playground

my mother’s surname is xie as in xie xie, thank you, my mother’s given name is qing, pronounced ching,  as in qing wa, frog,  green, the color of lilypads and the sky reflected in ponds  and the color of water at the right time of day

there’s an old story my mother liked to tell me of a frog at the bottom of a well who always looked up at the sliver of dazzling sky above him and thought that was it, that was the sky

but there is space beyond that there is an expanse beyond what i see from the bottom of  where people told me to find myself (years of being told to shut up sit down be quiet be meek  really does make you believe it after a while  you are nothing more)

i’ve always been an introvert i love the edges of conversations, the walls of rooms,  the quiet spaces between breaths watching waiting 

but i have learned that when i speak  it is okay  it is okay to let my voice reach to the corners of the room it is okay to be it is okay to be as big as small as much as little as i want to be

the color of the sky is qing today, and winter is coming

singing

sometimes i ask myself what constitutes art.  if art is blood sweat tears raw emotion poured out in whatever medium the artist sees fit then who are we to judge it peruse it label it as art or  not-art? 

but some art is better than other art! but quality! but there has to be some sort of standard of excellence! - the gatekeepers of the art world, probably

who’s to stop me from writing shitty love poems? i would call them love songs but my voice creaks too much and my jaw aches, rusty at its hinge

there was a boy, a couple months ago  and i told myself to not get attached and i was doing a pretty good job (hindsight, in the way it often does, prods me now and tells me that maybe i was also just  scared of not being enough for him)

or ever 

but i still often thought of the way the sun poked its  greedy little fingers through the slats in his black-brown eyes and how my stomach would clench tumble hiss  when i saw his name pop up on my facebook feed because he had liked some other girl’s picture, her eyes sparkling in the dim light her dress hugging her torso, waist, legs.

i guess it sounds silly even to me, even now that he’s gone for two years and when he comes back i’ll be long gone from this city  but the rain pounds against my window and reminds me that my heart still beats in a rhythm that i might not ever understand.

there was a girl, a couple weeks ago who i thought was pretty: the whole deal, soft lips and dewy eyes and gentle curved smile, and a mutual friend said to me that she had said to him that i was  attractive and it had been a long time since i felt (wanted)  anything by way of heart-thumping and we set up a date. 

she stopped messaging me after a while  and we both forgot about the date  (it was a busy saturday evening for the both of us)

the rain pounds against my window. i begin to sing a love song.

self-love

sleep a little farther away from me tonight, love

sometimes i forget that there are things about me  that you love that you hold in your hands like those tiny plants you bought for me last week (fine, i grumbled, they’re pretty, and then you smiled at me)