invasive procedures i had surgery when i was two. it was for a blocked intestine. i don't remember anything, but i can imagine. anesthesia tingling, feeling like how television static looks. perfect, painless cuts, crimson against a round, pale toddler's belly. metal prying apart flesh, digging for all the things that should stay buried. you will have hundreds of friends in your lifetime, but you will never trust anyone more than a surgeon. sometimes i wonder if, with one slip of the fingers, a small nick of a scalpel, they could slice open your heart, send secrets spilling forth. they probably know more about my insides, about me than i would ever be comfortable with. maybe that’s why i offer frozen smiles to classmates, acquaintances, not grins but bared teeth. maybe that’s why i hold people far away from me, an arm's length from my chest and any scars that linger there. i have felt open insides, have been peeled apart under blinding lights, and i am still healing.
snowglobe days let me live in unshaken snowglobes, where there is no air to lose and no love to miss. let things stay still forever, let tears fall in slow motion. i am tired of being tossed around like clothes in a wash until i am wrung out and left to hang. i know the world will never stop turning, but i have wished on all the stars in the sky for a day it does. so save me from movement, pull me away, fold my shaking hand in yours, and please, don't let go.
snowglobe days, continued the thing about glass prisons is they see too much. the whole world could be laughing and you wouldn’t even crack a smile because you are afraid of shattering, of what could come spilling out. you watch them because you are remembering what you missed and they watch you because you are a pretty decoration. you were afraid of trying to ride a wave on a different wavelength than everyone else, parallel-lining their happiness, and so you decided to take things in slow motion. now, you watch things fall around you and try to stop yourself from crumbling. it never works, but you can keep trying anyway. these aren’t the snow globe days you asked for, but they’re the ones you get. hold them carefully now--you can’t let go.
snowglobe days, rewritten give me the snow globe days i know, the last minutes before a new year, the final night of a vacation, time slowed down in glass, a thousand memories stacked between your hands. they’re everything you look back on and smile, the moments you hold tight like they’ll shatter. after all, happiness is too fragile to forget, so you keep it around, stack it on shelves. snow globes have no expiration date, you could buy a hundred of them for a hundred different times and you will stay the same in each one, forever golden, a slice of infinity in a world that never stops turning. please, give me snow globe days and i promise i won’t let go.
Dog days of summer July afternoon, and I am flying high. I fist my hands in chains, anchors That keep me from soaring away. I think if I swung high enough, I could taste cerulean Like ice cubes and watermelon warming in my mouth, Like birds with nowhere to go, like clouds floating adrift. The heat is bone-melting, and it chases me through the air. If I concentrate, I can feel wax burning on wrists, ankles, Feathers twirling in my wake. But I laugh. There is no room for misgivings here, not enough silence For screams to fill. July afternoon, and I leap into the sky. When the heat catches up, I am already falling.
4/6 This may be one of my least favorites, but it's late.
Spoiler! :
Lessons learned under the sky I used to wait for shooting stars, squinting into blackness And hoping they would appear. Sometimes, they would. Each one worth a thousand fireflies, a taste of the world above, The sky awakening for a brief moment before plunging into darkness. I used to hope they would fall into my hands, and when they didn’t, The earth felt tilted, my heart too small, My hands too stained, better left hidden in the dark. Sometimes, I thought I never deserved their glow. I tried to climb the tallest trees and reach for the sky, Clawing at pinpricks of light, trying to get a glimpse of everything I loved. It was only then that the moon began to feel colder, dimmer, The stars like crumbs of a meal, taunting me from where they hung. So I stopped trying. I watched them glisten and drew constellations And whispered my dreams to whichever ones would listen, And when the shooting stars fell, I watched them go by. It was okay then. I lay down on flat earth and let my heart beat, My hands slowly lit by the rising sun.
she loves me she loves me. and maybe i would even believe it if you hadn't sat there crying crocodile tears onto my blanket. you wear it like a second skin and i hate that sorrys always fall from my mouth faster than they ooze from yours. she loves me not. oh, it must be exhausting reading scripts all the time. dramatic entrance, give a soliloquy i don't want to hear, chew me up and spit my name out like it burned your tongue, exit stage left. she loves me. i should know better than to be concerned at all, honestly, you know how to play the game, play with my emotions until they blur together. at the end of the day, i can no longer tell what's real and what's not, so maybe you cry too easily or lie too well, and i don't know, i don't know-- she loves me not.
Imbalance We are ten feet apart, and I cannot reach you. Instead, I spend my days thinking about all of the ways I miss you, How we used to share breaths and stories in darkness. I used to be sure we were molded from the same clay, but now We are time-hardened, and you are granite hiding geodes, Memories you protect because it’s easier than breaking open. I think I am already broken. I slice my tongue on jagged pieces, the stories I still whisper at night, but the moon can hardly answer back. Words pile within me, bursting at the seams, and I can only swallow them down. They go down bitter, like the medicine we drank and spat out together, Except this time, I am not healing. I am tired of falling apart while you press yourself together, And there are cracks in your smile but you do it anyway.
seesaw girl seesaw girl, seesaw world, tell me why you wake up smiling and sleep on tear-stained pillowcases, why you basked in compliments when you were younger and can’t stand them now. they’re the same pretty words, but now they sound like houses of cards stacked on tongues. aren’t you tired of living on mood swings and battles you fight within yourself, on smiles and frowns tugged and pulled by puppeteer’s hands? oh, seesaw girl, you are nothing but a child’s plaything, no wonder you cannot stop yourself. you rise and fall like the tide, but i see it in your eyes-- all you want is for the world to stand still.
puppeteer's hands i woke up wooden today. it is strange to feel your limbs become stiff, creaking with every motion. it is stranger to know that you are someone else’s. there are strings trailing from every crack and edge, strings that twist around fingers that are not my own, strings tug on the splitting seams of my smile. i learned how to perform for an audience and crave the applause. i am a dance with no control, a fraud without a choice, and all i can do is obey, nod a head hanging from foreign fingers. so maybe i cannot be trusted with myself but a wooden heart does not trust anyone at all. so maybe pinocchio wanted to become a real boy but there’s a reason a real boy never wanted to become pinocchio.
4/11 I actually posted on the day I was supposed to! Yay
Spoiler! :
kore innocence /ˈinəsəns/ noun 1. dried flowers pressed between pages, one breath away from decay. these aren’t rose-colored glasses, they’re amber but they’re pretty close. i let them fall, watch them shatter, tangled in explosions of wildflowers. i crush them beneath my heel. 2. a pale hand, outstretched. waiting. it is only a matter of time, and when his cold fingers intertwine with mine, scissors cut thread. he is a dream i was never allowed to remember, and the flowers look paper-thin in his hands. 3. pomegranate seeds seering into my tongue, shredding between my teeth. garnet juices trail from the corners of my smile and i let them sin. he told me life was made for death so aren’t goddesses made to fall? when our lips touch, i keep my eyes open and watch myself bleed.
Hiding places Midnight, and I am pressed between closet walls, Hands fisting around wire lifelines, drowning In music. Drowning Out voices that scrape through darkness, Raining like knives upon flesh. Anger simmers downstairs, Rising in waves like summer heat, wrapping choking fingers Around my throat. I can only crouch tighter, I cling to hems and sleeves, pull on stitches until they unravel. I breathe in the scent of detergent, of being clean, Of being able to look people in the eyes And not let lies stain my bitter tongue. My body aches for warmth, and if I squeeze my eyes shut I can pretend my own arms around myself are enough. (They aren’t. I can feel pieces slipping through my fingers, Shattered glass, expired tears Spilling out anyway.)
Google told me I had cancer Children are supposed to be the curious ones, but “What if”s come so much easier than they did before. Demons crawl in the back of my mind, on sleepless nights while I turn these questions over and over and over until they fall flat in empty air. Questions are double-edged swords, the same way researching diseases in a bathroom was meant to calm my nerves but only agitated them instead. You can’t trust WebMD, God, don’t you know that, and I do. But I am tired of questions. They hiss in my ear, dangle apples within reach, coil around my neck until my breaths come short. Why don’t you do better, why didn’t you do anything, why are you like this, and all the whys in the world couldn’t give me an answer. So I stare at a screen until I convince myself of a lie. I accept living with a disease I don’t have and force myself to breathe, in and out, even if it feels like I don’t have much longer. I sleep with crescent moons in palms and music to drown out thoughts that snake their way back in the next morning.
4/14 I think I've given up on writing these on the day they're supposed to be written. The dates are just for reference I guess.
Spoiler! :
abc be careful. don't let it boil over. my father leaves me with a pot of dumplings and chopsticks and i wait. yesterday someone told me i wasn't Chinese enough. it was difficult to stop the tears then, rising, crashing, but maybe i should be used to it by now. all the cracks in my exterior widen during lagging video calls with distant relatives who i can't understand and who can't understand me. mom, how do you say not enough in Chinese, and the translation spills from her ready tongue. the pot is bubbling, and i stir the contents. i still do not know how to crimp the edges of dumplings just right, the way my parents do, but my classmates still wrinkle their noses when i eat them at lunch. i eat as fast as possible. ni hao, they say proudly, and i don't know how to tell them that yesterday, someone laughed at my botched greeting, my Americanized accent threaded through unfamiliar words. still, i nod, chew. i'm confused too. done, i tell my father, and he spoons the dumplings out on a plate. aiya, you should have told me sooner, they're falling apart, and apologies slip from my fractured tongue.
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. — Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
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