Young Writers Society

To Me, On November 9 2003

maybe it was Fate with her indelicate fingers
crawling through my red thanksgiving sweatshirt
or maybe it was the Fear that flooded
or the monotony of that Fear, as black and boring
as the sun-chipped morning and light, Mediterranean
breeze that poured through my big, open windows.

to this day, i can’t shake the feeling of
incredulity from my skin, of utter disbelief,
like when you wake up from a coma and realize
that the world around you has changed, that the
language the weatherman uses to describe a cloud
is strange, foreign, a feeling of speculation,
of the twine hairs of the airplane blanket
or the goldfish pool in a one-month backyard.

to me, on november 9 2003,
America was tiled and green,
open and blue.
to me, on november 9 2003,
America was an orange field,
a long waking moment of expectation
with stretching arms and yawning mouth.

am i a different person
than the pink, smiling boy, who pushes his red cheeks
to the novel coolness of the window, landing on that
green, unfamiliar hill near san francisco?

when you live in one place your whole life
it’s hard for memories to come flooding back to you
because memories are idiosyncratic; they are
created with change, with movement,
with newness and bumpiness—
they’re jagged, and they can pinch
and jab: sometimes they’ll cling onto you until you’ve taken
your last breath, and even after that, they’ll come pouring
into your casket, licking you with their spiked tongues.

to me
the memories of America
from november 9 2003
are life-size and distinct, like a scar,
but still long-past and blurry—

the bike rides along the bay shore and chasing yellow
bunnies across the pacific ocean and the first Christmas,
warm and sheltered inside an empty house
with a plastic, twinkling tree in the corner of my room.

empty houses are so familiar to me now.

i cannot recall our first, from apartment to suburb...
but i do, i do remember november 9 2003. i do, i do remember
that it was a sunday, and that two o’clock in the morning
was an hour of sadness, yet of hope and change.
the marble floor was as pale as skin,
and the walls looked to us with wrinkles and grief,
as if they had known all along
that we wouldn’t grow up in their shadows.
the black suitcases, heavy and profound, tumbled
on the stairs to the gate. i would never forget
when the four of us stood in a circle with our two grandmothers
and cried and sobbed and kissed each other and trembled with
an unbearable, guilty heaviness
until it was time to go to the terminal.

in san jose, our house was furnished with warm armchairs
and we lit the red-brick fireplace. in palo alto, the house was empty—
we filled it. a year-long, and
memories are gushing into me like gutters and gutters dribbling of rain.

san diego, we stationed ourselves that first night—
my birthday—
in the family room. i slowly evolved
and there’s memories yet, pulling themselves closer to my skin,
sucking my blood, wringing my red fat with long, black nails;
each memory heaves another breath from me, pursues another sigh
and short, tempestuous days
flow out my eyes like lifetimes. i remember the second day
how i learned that we could turn to the right on red.
on the third day, the impractical largeness of Costco and Wal-Mart;
on the fourth, the staccato i’s and the passionate a’s, o’s of Americans.

san diego, i learned
who i was, who i am. san diego, i learned
of me. i learned that i was
a person, a distinctive, individual, heroic
entity of infinitesimal proportion in the world.
i discovered myself in san diego. i grew up in san diego.
such a horrible city
cannot be described in a whole library of tomes
and yet can be embodied
in the core of one person.

it’s 1:30 a.m. in long island and i can see
a white streetlight in the darkness of my window
and i look around me
and i see who i have become. i see
where Fate has led me, where Fear
has led me, where yearning for
bigger, mercurial, has led me. i see
my past and my present, presented in a
soup, in a broth, turned and mixed
until one is indistinguishable from the other.
it’s november 9 2008 in long island
and i still can’t shake that feeling.

to this day, i can’t shake the feeling.
in new york, too, as well as in san diego, as well as in
palo alto, as well as in san jose, and as well as in that
cold, constricted Delta aircraft
where i already knew
that there was no way back.