when i was in high school

there was a time when i thought of death everyday. i dreamed of being engulfed into the dark energy of some abyss. i ate the idea up and hid it in the pit of my stomach and every morning before school, i would pick up the fragments of this carefully composed pottery and hope one of its slivers pricked the tips of my fingers.

i didn't ask to see much of the world. at noon, i examined the chipped pieces of curb paint by the sidewalk in front of my house. at 5 o'clock, i'd ponder at just how beautiful my tree swing looked in the sunset, but never thought much, fearing that if i looked at it long enough, it would be so beautiful i might explode.

i've learned to feel a sense of completeness since then, especially when the sun sets here at school and entrances the grass and the steeples with its pool of young amber. or when i have a good conversation or when i cradle a loaf of bread under my arm. i've toweled off the morning fog and gained a greater picture of seeing. but i still don't feel whole- whole like the energy that fuses the delicate egg with a first sperm. maybe that wholeness is supposed to occur just once, just there. then our body turns positions and starts to lose battles and wars, giving and giving and ending with wiry, gray hair and saggy, translucent skin.

my legs map every nick and scrap of every childhood fall, foreshadowing the deplorable conditions of age. then i look at you with your fast walk and clear eye and incorrigible expression and i lose my breath, and cannot compare at all.

The day i was born

i almost died. And i've spent the rest of my life figuring out why i didn't.

Last year, i dreamt a dream that my rose printed tulip skirt, the one all the girls in my french class ooed and ahhed and bantered over, the one that made my waist look smaller than the 26 inches it is in the morning, disappeared from my dorm dresser, that someone had taken it while i slept while i dreamt. When i woke up, i felt that it was gone and it was and is, to this day.

When i was thirteen years old, i wanted to look like the idea of bavarian cream. my lips had been created and melted and sealed for thirteen years. the action of speech was an unpeeling, as sticky and sweet as the sugar molecules that fused the creamy, yellow filling into a jiggly solid. most of all, i wanted to feel coveted and surrender to the will of the lascivious mouths of every apple-cheeked, balding suit wearer who always found a timid excuse to miss little league games, even on sunny saturday afternoons.

now, i want everyone who looks at me to think of home. to have a face that reminds everyone of creaky doors, fireplace incense and the magic of warm apple pie.

A Moveable Feast.

I often find myself feeling nostalgic for moments I've never experienced- a secluded park picnic, a big frosted birthday cake, getting lost on public transportation. However marvelous these ideas appear, in retrospect, it isn't nostalgia that churns out these buttery images, but rather they are romanticized pictures of life that can't possibly be real life at all.

With the coming of good weather, I dedicated ample amounts of time to being pancaked on the grass and leafing through books, exploring small gestures of such creamy ideas and providing white flesh for visiting insects. Whenever the weather is good and I am happy, I view life as a grapefruit almost organically- sliced in half, exposing its radial symmetry and raw heart so willingly and without hesitation, its pulp ready for the taking, the plunge.

With the coming of bad weather, I bundle up and shut myself from the world and spend copious amounts of time pinching out my flaws and examining them one by one, the little gems that accumulate to a crystal mountain lodged at the back of my throat. I would like to magnify them and allow them to bleed ruby droplets of insecurity and anguish. I'd follow its trail of sinister breadcrumbs, hoping to land upright on my slippered feet and feel my version of wholeness. In some ways, it makes absolute sense that I only feel truly alive when the world is dark. And I think I exacerbate the situation the more I think of it. I just hope that when the bad weather dies down, I can keep whatever ounce of catalyst that motivates me to look beyond the black sea and live like a mighty river.