one match.
when I was young I prayed that I would never grow up,
that I might always laugh at the way my best friend
pressed her lips to the side of her eggshell white hand
and fabricated a glorious, cacophonous ****
at the Genentech trolleys on Grand Avenue
which obligingly tooted their whistles in response
when we hollered “Jesus loves you” at them
from behind the school’s shuddering, rusted fence.
fourteen years of friendship later, we laugh
at how the lasagna we make at her place
slips and drips with too much cheese
over cups of lukewarm soda
and I find myself glad we have aged well.

two matches.
whoever said money can’t buy happiness
clearly never had to eat discounted Chinese food for a year.
the fried rice swims in oil or drowns in salt and
lettuce droops sadly on my fork. no spine.
I manage to bully my father into getting the BBQ pork instead of the beef and broccoli.
small victories are all we have.
it is said that we tricked Zeus into taking the fat for his altars
instead of the good meat,
but the fat hoards flavor,
even if it has no value.
value, I find, is an opinion,
and I ignore my sister’s warnings
when she tells me not to eat the skin off the fried chicken,
unhealthy but all-too-tasty crunch.

three matches.
the commute to school is rough for the first few weeks,
on the soggy dregs of my last summer paycheck.
morning dew makes the stone seats at the train station
no man’s land.
the mornings grow easier when I learn to admire
the way the train howls when it arrives, demanding attention,
and the way it hums contentedly when it leaves
with a belly full of passengers.
the hour long journey is easier now that I wave
to the man who sits on his porch near Sunnyvale
around 9:20, and at 9:25,
I invent reasons for why someone is growing
a square yard of corn in their backyard.

seventeen matches.
the pains of my past bring laughter now. the last cold breath of winter
washed away by the clean, fragrant air of spring
and the obnoxious dandelions blooming in my front yard
that I make a point to punt when I leave in the mornings.
I thought spite would push me forward, green-hearted, hollow,
but it is my joy at my daily morning bagel
my love for the cheap dining hall pasta
and not the subpar sushi burrito
that sustains me. somehow
the hollow things become hallow.

empty matchbox.
I remember God in the way
that the yellow roses in my front yard rebel,
resisting parching droughts and relentless bugs
fifteen years strong without a drop of water from our hands,
clipped from the neighbor’s rosebush
boldly invading our old backyard in the city.
each season, withered to barren, grayed thorns,
but the sunrise illuminates a single bud
despite the odds.
my hope is, then,
that the coldest winter will always lead
to the bright, golden mornings of spring,
that I might thaw the ice set in your bones from
the chill of ill-fated loves.
it is good to know the grief of death
to savor the joy of life
just as I wish these words
might be your persistent roses.

so now I say to you, my heart,
to the girl who burns,
you should never cross that mountain,
the one they built of skyscraping expectations for a child
now too grown for their chains,
built from dreams you did not dream.
you need only be enough for yourself.
as for that other peak
your pilgrimage in search of an
insurmountable love--
it is too early to foresee anything
in a sea so vast
and unpredictable.

and you have learned your lesson
with pyromancy. love should not burn too bright,
for eyes ablaze tend toward blindness, anyway.
your fingertips scorched hearts made of wood
too pliant, or too unyielding,
and thin branches that
could not sustain or stand
your vibrant flame.

you once believed in no one and nothing,
lost in a landscape of eternal fog.
“they always leave, little bird”, you said once,
and you have every right to be afraid and look away--
but do not leave yourself either.
so, stay. linger for a while longer,
and wade through the vague, heavy gray.
a world of “what if” is a world of hope, too.

with iron resolve, then, rally yourself!
you have bloomed into a rose
lovely and fierce in your own right.
turn your well-worn eyes to the sea in the sky far above,
remember: the stars falter sometimes too.

I piece together my dreams into a new one,
a stained-glass window refracting and reflecting
countless probabilities,
blithe childhood ideas made strong
by a toolbox filled up over time.
education and foundations.
stories I wrote in my preteen years
are stuffed into molding cabinets
to fly high and wild one day
lying dormant till they catch fire and are reborn.

I no longer pray for freedom. happiness is my freedom,
a choice I did not know I had.
eyes scrubbed clean by salt make for good eyesight,
dust cleared by the whirling monsoons of adolescence.
the thorny path is one of enlightenment and suffering
and I have found my roses despite the blood.

tucked away within a black box,
wrapped neatly in white, waxen paper,
pristine as the day it last kissed my skin
the razor occasionally stirs.

after all these years, I finally manage to ignore its call.

she writes these words and passes them to me—
pain is easier when shared.
fingers intertwined,
ill-fated loves be ******, we turned ourselves to gold
and reveled in our own brightness,
shining fierce through the icy mists of uncertainty.

the day after Thanksgiving my sister shatters my monitor and
I scream myself hoarse, cry tears that burn hot and angry.
my friends tell me that this is abuse.
they ask me when I will be free.
I close my eyes,
whisper softly to myself,
“have spirit, not spite!”
and somehow breathe myself
back to life.

my father still looks at me
and tells me I am wider than the day before
as if I do not look in the mirror and mourn the sight of myself.
I am not what they expected.
smiling, (he thinks he means well),
I say that I can only grow as I get older
and let the weight slide off my shoulders.
it is not my job to carry the burden
of his unfulfilled dreams.

my sister kicks open my door to wake me,
calls me useless,
and stalks off. she will return with more poison, in time.
I return to my sleep,
unconcerned,
an antidote of my own
against their relentless venom.
soon I will purge two decades of toxicity
from my heart.

there is no prince for her. she will not wait
for another half-hearted heart to make hers whole.
love-stale eyes rest on the edge of the yellowing page
and she smiles at this story, her favorite.
the little mermaid found joy through her pain,
danced through the wispy clouds,
the swirling winds, and rose with the sun,
beyond the pangs of love.
can she do the same?

wondering, wandering. rubber peels from her soles in flakes
as she skips pebbles aimlessly across the black concrete.
she pauses at the fading crosswalk
and watches the sun hang in the still-blue sky
drooping low, its crest white-hot,
scorching the clouds. it paints them rose pink, lavender blue,
illuminates the edge of the ascendant moon in gold.
the usually mild autumn wind nips her cheek playfully,
urging her along.

the tap of her feet on the pavement is airy and light.
she hums to herself tunes she’s forgotten how to play
on the chipped piano in their moth-rich living room.
a breathless joy, an ember,
sparks in her ribcage.
she has learned the melodies
running through the rain-softened soil
bouncing beneath her heels,
the dance of the city lights in the night,
the symphony of birdsong heralding the waking sun,
the kiss of morning dew on the emerald grass.