imagine that you live in a world where, until you reach the age of sixteen, the food orzo is forbidden.

you've heard about orzo. how could you not? it's everywhere, because it seems like everybody loves orzo. orzo this, orzo that. for your whole life, you've heard about the glory of orzo. most people you know can't wait to try it. they talk about it all the time.

you, though, you've never had the overwhelming urge to eat orzo, not like it seems your peers do. still, you go along with it, because everybody else loves orzo and can't wait to try it.

eventually, you ask your dad whether he's always liked orzo. "yes," he says, "of course. you might not like it now, but you'll love it when you're older." he then shows you how to make orzo, even though you're not at all curious.

your peers have begun to try orzo. they all give glowing reviews. but despite their enthusiasm, it still seems kind of odd to you. why is everyone so worked up over orzo? what makes it so great?

life goes on. maybe you tried orzo. maybe you didn't. either way, you've decided it's not your thing. the only problem? no one else gets it. they all say, "what do you mean you don't like orzo? everybody likes orzo. maybe you just haven't found the right recipe yet." but you know that you don't like orzo. you probably never will. and everyone else thinks you strange for this.

this is what it's like to be asexual in this environment.

i never really liked my mind much -
too loud, too full,
too distracting -
until i discovered algebra.

my first love was factorization.
my second was l'hôpital.
my third, ramanujan.

i fell in love with numbers
before i fell in love with you
because they make sense
when you don't.

the night they wed,
cinderella slits the prince’s throat.
she won’t trade her prison
for a pretty cage.

the beast conquers nations,
but beauty’s the one telling him how.

aurora wakes herself.
she’ll spend centuries guarding
a city that never stirs,
and she never questions
her duty to people long gone.

rapunzel burns the tower.
ariel rules the sea.

if you value me less
for what you see
then the problem's with you
not with me

i fell in love through song,
through a girl like me
loving a girl like you.

i fell in love not in a heartbeat,
not in a breath.
these things take time.
i take time.

i fell in love through a song
i played on repeat three days ago.
i fell in love with you
through words i cannot hear.

i met you exactly once.
i was five and you were tall
and you'd brought me some toy
(stereotypically girly).
i've never played with dolls
and you apologized for assuming.
a week later
you sent me some legos.

i've seen you exactly twice.
the first, i barely remember.
the second i recall all too well
because my parents were crying
but my cousin,
your son,
wasn't.

i find myself wishing i'd kept the **** doll
because the legos you got me
were mixed with the others
a long time ago.

i've learned to love skydiving
because if i close my eyes,
if i tune out the air whipping by,
it feels just like falling in love.

i have felt hanzi in my blood
fireworks in my skin
dragons in my bones

i have looked at a cloudy sky
and thought of guangzhou
of shenzen
of nanjing

walls and death and power are my legacy
i was born the descendant of a tyrant
but i have changed it
twisted it
and now i am the ancestor of a diamond age

once upon a time we bound our feet in rags
and hobbled on dirt-packed roads
but not anymore
not anymore
now we sprint full-out to the east
the rising sun calls us like silken whispers
and we laugh at those who would hold us back

walls and death and power are the legacy
of those who reach for it
of those who write defiance on their chests
in ****** pinyin
and above all
of those who take the fireworks from their skin
and scream them alive

12:37 AM
do you ever wake up wondering whether the stars watch us

12:37 AM
like reverse stargazing

12:37 AM
do you think they see us like we see them or

12:38 AM
are we more familiar to them

12:38 AM
than the other way around



2:49 AM
hey you know what

2:49 AM
i think we're not so differ

2:49 AM
different

2:50 AM
us and the stars

2:52 AM
maybe you can tell me what you think when you meet them



3:17 AM
remember that one time jupiter swung down for the moon?

3:18 AM
i saw no stars that night



5:10 AM
you told me once that i'd forgotten to count the galaxies

5:12 AM
and i told you that

5:12 AM
the night before

5:13 AM
i'd never stopped counting



8:02 PM
don't you ever wonder what it would feel like

8:03 PM
to look down on the earth

8:27 PM
from the milky way?

8:40 PM*
don't you ever wonder why we never will?

AVA:** drinking sriracha so that i can feel something
GRACE: *** how'd it go
AVA: not well
GRACE: *** ava u liar u r practically a genius
AVA: that's hilarious
AVA: sayS THE GIRL IN GENIUS MATH
GRACE: wish you were here
AVA: what???
GRACE: nvm, ignore me
GRACE: wrong person

GRACE: i'm sure ur test went fine

if i could capture you with a metaphor
i'd say you were like the sea:
hidden power, tides moving with the moon.

i'd say you were like cliff diving
because i live for this temporary suicide
and the adrenaline rush halfway down.

i'd say you were like magnetism,
sparking, bending light,
drawing me in without discrimination.

i might even say that you were like a metaphor,
because they try to make sense of the impossible
and that's what you do with me.

the moon knows.

she has seen countless confessions in her light, watched life and death alike, and judged none of it. the moon is the one who will not whisper your secrets to the stars. she is just a reflection, after all. limited by her existence.

the sun is the one who will betray you, will turn his back on you, will scream everything you've done to everyone awake to hear. the sun shines and does not care if you burn beneath him.

the moon does not care, either, but she is not vindictive, and for that, we tell her things the sun will never know.

didn't anyone tell you that the moon can keep a secret?

she is not the sun.

here’s kind of a funny story.

they knew i had hearing loss when i was eight. what followed was doctors and operations and more doctors and the funny thing is that they still don’t know why i can’t hear out of my right ear. what’s not quite as funny is how i treated it. how i thought that this was something to be ashamed of and hidden, how i thought that it was weak, somehow, to not be able to hear.

it’s hard in class, sometimes. if we’ve got some kind of discussion going and people all over the room are talking and i’ve got to turn my head, whipping around from person to person, trying to get my left ear pointed in their direction. i never make it every time so it’s always a cut, disjointed thing, the tail end of a sentence that i don’t have the context for. sometimes there’s background noise and that makes it worse. loud air conditioning or people whispering and i can’t focus, can’t hear, even when it’s just the teacher talking and i’ve gotten my left ear set up in their direction. i’d love to tell them to shut up but i’m pretty sure they think i’m aloof because sometimes when they talk to me i don’t hear them.

asking teachers for closed captions is hard. going up to them and pretty much telling them hey, i can’t hear, change your class for me, is something i don’t think i’ll ever be good at. and sometimes they don’t know what i’m talking about. sometimes they ask the class to fix it and oh god that’s embarrassing because i know it’s nothing to be ashamed of but i still am. ashamed, that is.

there are these old movies from the eighties that we watch in history class. they don’t have captions. the ones about china are my favorite because it’s like, that’s me. that’s who i could’ve been. and the movies, they’ve got these interview segments. people speaking in Chinese, their first language, and us listening. they turn down the volume on the Chinese and lay over it English translations of whatever it is they’re saying and maybe for other people that’s a good thing but for me it’s not. for me it means that the Chinese that i don’t really know but can guess at fades into this muddle of sound, English and Chinese and cheesy background music all mushed together in something that i can’t hear.

i still don’t know what they say on the school announcements and i’m done caring.

sometimes i’m sitting in the audience of the auditorium and i don’t really know what’s going on. school assemblies are the worst. rapping and fuzzy mikes and so much background noise that even if i wanted to hear the stage i wouldn’t be able to. all i can do is cover my left ear and try to ignore the faded feedback from the right. because it’s not rude if you’re not covering both ears, right?

(i can’t stand not knowing so it’s better to cut that off at the beginning. to make sure i know that i won’t be able to hear them with three-fourths of my hearing gone. it’s less disappointing, that way.)

i can hear the people i need to. it takes a while but if i know someone’s voice well enough, if i care enough to learn it, it’s easier to understand, even if i only catch an intonation of a syllable instead of a word. and they know. they know i can’t hear so they walk on my left side and i love them for it. if someone won’t walk on my left side when i ask them to i know that i won’t learn their voice.

someone tell me why it’s the twenty-first century and people still think “deaf and dumb” is a definition instead of an outdated relic. someone tell me why it’s the twenty-first century and audism runs rampant through people who would rather label us than know us. someone tell me why it’s the twenty-first century and there are still people who think deafness is an illness. that my hearing is something that should be cured. that it’s stupid, ridiculous, to be proud of a “defect.”

someone tell me why my ASL teacher didn’t stop to ask the class if someone had trouble hearing. wait, no, you don’t need to tell me. i know why. it’s because you assume hearing until you’re wrong and that’s so strange to me, because i haven’t been hearing in years and it’s not like i’m trying that hard to hide it. you’d think that someone who knows ASL would realize if one of her students had no idea what was going on.

the first thing someone asks me when they learn i’ve got hearing loss is whether i read lips. i don’t read lips. take away the sound and have me stare at a silent video and i’m helpless. but i can supplement. i can take what i’ve heard and match it up with the movement of the lips, the throat. is that an R? yeah, it is. did they say elephant? yeah, they did.

it took me a long time to tell myself that this was okay. that not all communication is verbal and how, exactly, is this an exception? maybe people think i’m strange for staring at their mouths when they speak but if they don’t know why it’s not really their business to know.

someone tell me why it took my whole life to realize that i don’t care whether i can hear or not as long as i understand the world around me.

that’s why math is my favorite class, i think. no lectures or explanations necessary. just me and the numbers and mathematical notation.

math is a class that i don’t need to hear in. and i’m most comfortable with the silence.

how lucky i am
to have loved
and been loved by
you.

(luck
has never been
on our side.)

her eyes hold thunder
and her blood is magma.

what matters love
to a goddess of death?

say cowboy.
say hot dog.
say ice cream.
say baseball.
see, the step into the sound booth is an awkward height,
about 6 inches off the ground,
and i find myself raised on a pedestal,
sealed in for you to inspect,
watching you and an audiologist
through a glass window,
watching you decide my future
as you face away from me
so i cannot read your lips
and you cannot see me shouting stop.

say airplane,
say sidewalk,
say you might hear static in your right ear
but i know i will only hear a tone,
an electronic beep going on and on and on

say conducive hearing loss say sensoneurial damage say surgery say it might be permanent this time,
like it hasn't been permanent for the last ten years,
say there's a new technique say we can fix this,
say negative impact on social life, say poor classroom performance,
say we just want what's best for you,
say try hearing aids try CIs try cued speech,
say you need to be fixed.

it's been a decade since i first entered that sound booth,
noises not echoing off these walls that take a little more from me with every test.
it's been a decade since my hearing slipped away and
i am done mourning it but i don't think you are.

persistence is a valuable trait but stop trying,
stop putting me under with an x on my right cheek so the surgeons know how to lay me out on the operating table,
stop refusing to turn on the captions because i need the practice,
stop talking to me without tapping me first,
stop screaming at me when i mishear.

i am done mourning my hearing and i don't know if i ever grieved in the first place but you are still stuck in the stage of denial,
hoping against hope for some ******* miracle.
i don't want a miracle, i don't want anything god can give me because i am not lacking, i am whole, i already am the miracle you were looking for and i don't need to be fixed.

but you don’t believe that, do you?

so the audiologist can open the heavy soundproof door but i am still trapped inside this box,
the walls swallowing my words as you decide my future for me because
no one wants to listen to those who cannot hear.

say stop sign,
say hairbrush,
say push the button when you hear the beep
and i hold it down with my thumb,
gripping the clicker like the handle of a gun
until you tell me to let go.
but i hear deserts stretching away from me,
flat sci-fi dreamscapes where there is only one sound and i can hear it too.

say tinnitus,
say psychosomatic because you don't believe that i might hear infinity where you tell me i shouldn't.
say hole in the eardrum say the surgery might have accelerated the deterioration,
say we can try again but
i gave up ten years ago and i think you should too,
and i'm here in this sound booth screaming for you to stop
but you will not look at me,
will not even attempt communication.

no one wants to listen
to those who cannot hear.

you laugh long and loud
tell me anger is uncalled for
tell me "it's a compliment"

i want to tell you this:
my ancestors killed thousands
conquered nations
burned kings alive
yet somehow you think
that i can't do the same

maybe i'd just like to know
what makes you human
when you've torn me down
so inhumanly

secrets on your lips,
tremors in my hands -
we'll shake ourselves alive
and watch the earth burn

i think i fell in love with an idea
and i thought the idea was you

i think i fell out of love with you
when i realized i felt more alone
with you than without

the sun and moon collided,
burning desperate tragedies.

but i think you and i
might have been the real casualties.