I feel like we are in
an old Hayao Miyazaki movie.
I suspect we are hand-drawn people
hunched over hand-spun milkshakes from a classic American diner
like Culver's burgers and fries.

I imagine the real me
has fallen asleep on a couch
in front of a microwaved dinner
somewhere in the distant future.
I think I was watching
the snow
fall outside the window
like static on a TV screen.

I could have been watching
the same Saturday morning
on loop,
walking in frames
to the same diner we've been going to since you were five.

There, we meet for breakfast
by the window.
Your hand is drawn wearing a gold wedding ring. I smile behind a silver beard.
Though it's hard to recognize our faces,
we say things that sound familiar

something about
how our favorite
Hayao Miyazaki movies
illustrated the passage of
time
through the eyes of a child

You order a kids meal
with a milkshake
in a classic re-enactment of
the days
I thought would
never end.

Dear Basketball,

Why am I not six foot six.

If I could reach just a little higher,
I would score you with ease.

We’d make a winning team.

You’d be my world
spinning on the tip of my finger.
We’d shoot for the moon
night-in and night-out,
with no fear of falling
because your gravity
is the force that
grounds me.

We’d have a bounce to our step:
you striking the pavement
like a war drum and me
walking on air
with my head in the clouds
of Southern California.

We'd turn soaring
over expectations
into a high art.

Imagine this: the first
sub-six-foot Asian minority
in the NBA
wins the MVP!

And they would pay us!  
Never mind the money.
We'll earn a wealth of respect.
We'll command conundrums.
Coaches across the league would
call us a problem and
scratch their heads drawing
up defensive formulas on white boards
named after us.

I realize that’s a long shot.
I'm taking it.

You won’t even see me flinch

even if you did hit me
between the eyes
and broke my nose
on that inbound play,
I’d grin
in the face of the opponent

like how my four-year-old girl
handled pneumonia in a hospital bed,
I will emerge from any cold spell
with child-like hope
and a Gigi-like game face,
jaws jutting out

Because adversity
is what brings out greatness
and struggle
is what proves you
are still alive.

I could be trailing
by 20 for an entire game

I could have zero points,
but no doubts
that the next shot is going in.

I'm taking it.

Even if it means
fading away
into the darkness
over multiple hands
outstretched with
our goal that is the basket
nowhere to be seen

I'd throw my hopes and fears
into the wind for you,
regardless of what the defense throws back.

If basketball is a religion,
then I am a devout practitioner,
putting up prayers from behind the arc

And when things don't bounce our way,
I won't blame you.

Defeat reveals what you're
fundamentally made of,
so I will work on my form:
fingers along your grooves,
toes pointed ahead,
follow through.

I will work on my endurance:
hustle beats skill any day

I will work on passing you
and the wisdom you bring
to the next generation,
so they can score whatever it is
they dream

I will work to give my daughter
the best possible shot

I will lead by example.

Championships come and go:
what we are working towards
will last forever

And guess what, Basketball?
I will still be far from six foot six,
making it very hard to play you well.

That’s no excuse.
That just means I will practice dribbling low
to the ground and moving
like a shadow beneath their feet.

No one can guard
what they can't see coming:
we'll fly under the radar.

I'd give you the best of me
to let you bring out
the beast in me:
an apex predator
with a forked tongue
through bared fangs
and black skin thick as
battle armor

No amount of hisses and boos
can block our shot.

We'd go the distance,
crossing over
into the unknown and
through whatever
physical and emotional
contact comes next

I will hit the floor for you,
rise up
and sink my free throws
on a limp.

If I needed 81 points
to win you over,
I’d bring back each one
in an autographed bucket,
even if it takes 82 games to do it.

We could spend a long,
loosing season together,
and I would still wake up at 4 a.m.
to see you
in an empty gym,
while dawn turns the sky
from purple into gold.  

I’d savor every drop
of sweat the comes from
running back and forth
for miles in your shoes
between your two bottomless baskets.

I don't care how tall I am.
We are chasing the footsteps of
immortal giants,
if only to write our own legends
that will never die.

Even if I had just 24 seconds
to do it,
I’d spend every last one
believing in miracles.

It’s a long shot,
but together,
we can’t miss.

Long Live You,
Your Number One Fan

The law of attraction says that you attract what you think.

So, there's a chance you're attracted to me
because I think about you often.

Except the law of attraction fails
when walking into a sliding glass door.

Ever done that?
It's like stubbing your toe, only it's your face.
And though it's your face that takes the hit,
it really just hurts your spirit.

Nothing about it looks attractive.

Like the other day, a hawk — a widely respected bird of prey —
flew straight into my office window
with a humiliating thud
because it thought the reflection it saw
was more sky.

Hawks are supposed to see everything!

So the law of attraction
causes blindness.

It promotes crash landings.
Or at the least, awkward tripping
over words
or the lines we drew in sidewalk chalk.
It's just a friendly game of four square, right?
I’ll wait to step into your circle
only to stumble and fall for you
with a humiliating thud.

sorry, did you hear something?

It sounded faintly like a dream just shattered,
but I think you said this is your fiance.

so
nice
to
meet
you

I hope your wedding has an open bar.

I mean, I hope your wedding sets the bar
for
your
marriage
to reach limitless heights.

And don’t mind the mess. I’ll just sweep it up like nothing happened and catch up with you love birds later (never) - watch out for the glass.

This law sounds a lot like gravity, and it too
is flawed because people fall
for people that don't fall back.
And then you get the odd man out
walking into closed doors and wanting to curse on impact,
but I will hold my tongue.
Because cursing will attract curses.
Instead, I'll bring gifts — I know,
a stuffed teddy bird —
and I'll leave one at the foot
of every sliding glass door
that doesn't open.

I realize that sounds creepy.

So I’ll just leave them by the window
(my window)
where I can watch the moon I shot for
behind the clouds.
Until another blind hawk goes down.
Then it's a less attractive view.

It's hard to get sleep in an empty bed,
to wake up in front of a fake tree in late January
and open the gifts I never got to give.

The law of attraction:
it’s an ugly Christmas sweater.

If I can't attract who I think,
then I'll repel the cold that I feel
until I'm convinced that this empty feeling
is freedom - the kind that precedes flight.

I believe in defying the gravity of my emotions.

Therefore, I don't believe in laws.
They just break.
I once believed in marriage
until it broke
and I want my daughter
to believe it was no one’s fault

This is a lawless country — think feudal Japan —
where lovers are fighters and who is to tell the masterless heart what to do.
It's a teenager
who never made it past high school
because it keeps skipping class.

Fear not: I am a grown up.
I am too old to be falling
for the pseudoscience of false hope
even if our chemistry doesn't lie.
Except our math doesn't add up.
And my history is an essay on wartime aviation
crumpled and thrown out of an open window
because I used the word 'alone' too many times
to describe what it feels like to fly solo

Alone means nothing on paper
It should be torn in half:
All and One no longer together

Anything that isn't one
must be in pieces,
and being with some One
is not the end all, be all

God was a lonely man for Christ sake

I’ll think of other words:
Alone, all one, no.
One.

Thinking attracts no one.

I'll make up a new law:
don't think. Move

Just not near anything made of glass.
It’s bad for the birds.
I got nothing but love for the birds.

The word alone
means nothing on paper.

It should be torn
in half: "all" and
"one" no longer
together.

Anything that isn't one
must be in pieces,
and being with someone
is not the end all, be all.

God was a lonely man for Christ sake.

It's okay to be alone,
because oneness
is wholeness.

Sing it with me:
There is nothing greater
than being whole.

(1) Fall

was the season of
detachment,
where she learned to kiss
old flames goodbye

She walks alone,
crushing

(2) Leaves

To stay warm,
burns love letters

As lips turn
the color of ice,
she holds onto an image
of a sweet word
left by the wind.

It's all about timing.
Or loosing
track of it all
while waiting
until the sepia-tinted end of
an autumn day together.
It's the time we poured
into an otherwise empty shell
made of crust:
sugar and flour falling into place like
minutes savored in sweet company,
like aftertaste.
It's the sound those ingredients
make when spun,
when licked off of fingers
as our handmade batter
takes on the color of a setting sun.
And unlike bean burritos from Taco Bell,
what's hidden inside is real and won't let us down.
It lifts us up like steam
from an open window,
the kind we create from within
as our excuse
to gather around a table
before winter arrives.
It has our voices baked inside,
because one does not eat
the whole thing in silence
by themselves.
No, the recipe calls for people:
not their likes of its picture
on a social media feed, hashtag foodporn.
I'm talking about
the delicacy of human presence
divided among kindred spirits.
It's the air from childhood
that we breathe back in
when we're home at last,
with only so many slices to go around
before the timer on the oven
rings
and it's gone.

It's us, still hungry after
the feast ends in the absence of

There are three bright spots worth looking for on cloudy days.

In the morning, it’s coffee with you. We find our silver lining in a hole-in-the-wall cafe near the market where fish fly, talking vividly about what we dreamed as muted light finds its way through the window where we sit. We save the moment, but say bye too fast as if we had flights of our own to catch. And we loose sight of each other in the never-ending current of strangers rushing past. The sky reverts to its stone grey self, and I drift in the company of office buildings, weightless as the clouds from my breath.

We meet again, at a walk-up noodle joint on the pier. We share a steaming bowl of tonkatsu ramen and gaze at the mist-covered bay, talking about the jobs that keep us from waking up. The sun peeks through a blanket of overcast to find us. We take a selfie: in it, we are beaming. We say bye again, this time, with an embrace as warm as the soup on our lips. We save the moment, floating alongside the edge of the water with a glow that will see us through the chilly night ahead.

The last bright spot is the golden hour. It gets dark far too early here, so there is no time to waste. We spend what’s left of it together, over a drink that burns when swallowed in a dimly lit bar beneath a stairwell. It begins to rain. We say nothing this time, and instead, share an unspoken understanding of who we are at the end of cloudy days. We put a finger on it, and promise that we’ll see each other again no matter how heavy the fog may get. We’ll find our way through. We save one last moment and slip into the wintery mist, seeing clear.

In a place with as much grey area as this, the word ‘alone’ looks blurred: it’s ‘all’ and ‘one’ put together, where nothing is missing. The selfie we took comes into focus: it was myself, a complete stranger in my own company. Now, when it's cloudy outside, we see each other through it, filling whatever is empty like a glass, toasting to the brightness found within.