Burnt toast and
a spot of blood.

Father dresses for work
and leaves with a wave,
his gabardine suit
the exact same shade
as the storm cloud blooming
on the back of his left hand.

After breakfast, mother pins
his undershirts to the wash line,
clothespins clenched
between broken teeth.

From my upstairs window,
I watch his shirts stiffening
in the flinty December air,
a chorus of white flags,
obsequious and clean.

Mother recovers in the laundry room,
where the floor is dusted with feeble
grains of spilled detergent.

I spend the afternoon
preparing for the sound
of tires crunching on gravel,
for the sweep of headlights
across the lawn.

There are plans
and maneuvers
to arrange.

Counterattacks.

Even now, the snow
on the side of the road

has turned to the color
of my childhood.

Let me ensnare you
here in the spaces
between these lines
pouring desire from
the recesses of my mind
let my words flow like
ice water down your spine
for in script, you are now mine

i often feel like hollow light. If you
were to touch me, there would be
nothing but a hand passing through
a few swirling luminescent particles—
i am a ghost pretending to be human.
i admit that this is hard for me to say–
writing without wrapping words
in warmth is unsafe, risk-laden; my
fingers freeze up, unmoving,
suddenly unknowing. there are
a few moments each day when i lose
all my speech, and five, ten, fifteen
years of learning how to hold myself
together with shaky hands vanish,
swallowed like lifeboats sinking. i
would like to tell the truths buried in
my stomach—like cutting open the sky
and watching all the stars fall through
torn fabric—but each time my
words fail me, and so I will never call
myself a poet. perhaps one of the
most difficult things is writing
without metaphors—i can’t make
fear or pain or the shaky breaths
that happen after you’ve cried for too
long sound soft or lovely or like deep
ocean tremors, and now i am no longer
an artist, i am just the raw, bare soul
of a person who never quite got the
hang of stability. still i am attempting
to decipher how all these people
keep their feet on the ground, so if
you find anything for me to saw the
wings growing from my ankles off with,
let me know.

I saw it in her eyes
She was going to leave
*But she didn’t know it yet

i want to bleed out all the sadness
until my ****** runs out of color
and becomes clear again

i want to scrub myself like a bathroom floor
hard and rough
until all the dirt comes off
so maybe, even just for a few days,
yeah maybe i could shine

or i shouldn't shower
wait for some weeks
won't even ****
i don't want my bathroom get *****
if i have to **** i will **** on my hands
and carefully put it in the trash bin
for my landlady's turkey to eat

how i wish i could just throw away
all these dishes
and not be found out

i want the time to stop so i can rest awhile
and not just procrastinate
i want to really rest
like an unpopular mountain, like an unknown lake
i want it to be very still and silent i can hear my own blood rushing

but what if i have diarrhea
and can't **** so neatly like i always did
what if it's been a week and it won't stop
and it won't even get me skinny

i'm so homesick i order a hainanese rice
i'm so homesick i don't want to not sleep even though it's the finals week
i'm so homesick i want to drop out of school
i'm so homesick everything becomes empty and hurts

i've been collecting empty beer cans because i don't want my landlady to tell my mother that i drink

i want to dry myself in the sun but
i can't
even get out of bed to turn
on the light
don't open the window and take a nap
it's the rainy season