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

WHY CAN'T YOU TELL ME
THE THINGS I TELL YOU

I WANT TO BEAR
YOUR BURDENS TOO

my hands have been red since the moment you left.

there is blood under my fingernails,
staining once-clean skin,
tainting my every word.

there is blood under my fingernails
and if i squint their half-moons
might maybe once upon a time
look like your always half smile.
(now i know why you could never
give me a whole.)

there is blood under my fingernails
and i do not plan to clean it.
maybe i want strangers to know
just what i am willing to do.

there is blood under my fingernails
and when they find me here,
staring at your corpse and
echoing my silent screams,
there will still be blood
where i cannot reach.

your blood is under my fingernails.
i'll come for you in the afterlife
and rip you apart again.

you were a network
of supernovas and stardust,
bound together by light.
you would glow, baby,
and your light burned
through the velvet sky.

it's so easy to forget that
in the game of life
we are ephemeral.

it's so easy to forget that
galaxies die too.

it's so easy to forget that
light lives for eons
after a star's death.

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.

my body's an atomic wasteland
after the explosion that was you
my heart's just a geiger counter
counting the years since we blew

once upon a time*
and we all know how this story goes:
there's a princess in a tower
waiting for true love to find her.
don't lie: you wanted to be royalty
back before reality set in.
you outgrew it.

i never did.
i've always loved fairytales
but i never wanted to be the hero.
i'm no damsel in distress.
me? i wanted to be the dragon.

i wanted to plunder and pillage,
to put myself first,
to take instead of give.

i wanted to kidnap the princess
and feel the rush of power
that comes from leaving
a kingdom in fear.

i wanted to live for myself.
i wanted to not care when
someone told me to do better,
when people called me failure.

i wanted to burn people with my fire
like i wished i could with words.

i wanted to be legendary,
divine,
better
than
before.

i wanted to be the dragon
because the dragon always dies.

sometimes i imagine
what the world would be sans us:
a species so self-destructive
that we **** ourselves
in the name of peace

then i remember:
we alone try to capture
the impossible
with words

and maybe?
maybe that's enough.

full stop, false start.
you're fooling everyone except
the one who [should] matter.

let's read shakespeare.
hand me othello's tale of woe.
watch me stop halfway through,
fiction all too real.

pause.
exhale.

i told you i was glass,
fingernails like windows
into my bloodstream,
but you cracked me anyways.

and it's like you took from me
these endless skies
and pretended the stars
had always been black.

it's like you dropped on me
the atomic ******* bomb
then pretended your fallout
was nothing but smoke.

i want to be a wildfire.
i want my existence to burn.

i want to be a volcano.
i want my apex to be an eruption.

i want to be an earthquake.
i want to take the fault lines
and make them chasms.

i want to be a tornado.
i want to **** the air from your lungs.

i want to be a hurricane.
i want to rage and rage and rage
but always protect my core.

i want to be a force of nature.
**** anyone who stands in my way.

people compare depression to
not being able to get out of bed

for me it's always been more like
getting up and not knowing
what to do
next

i've spent 6 months
observing you with her.
i've come to this conclusion:
yeah, you talk nice,
painting pictures in the air,
but you are just that -
air.

you are just that -
insubstantial.

do you want to be invincible?

i want to turn my skin to diamond
so the only thing that can hurt me
is myself.

i want to become adamantium
so i can walk through the fire
and pull you out.

i want to be bulletproof,
laugh at those who would challenge me
with weapons.

but at the same time -
i want to be as fragile as a flower
so i can be touched by the sun.

i want to bend with you
instead of standing, unflinching,
in the face of love.

i want to feel pain and sorrow and heartbreak
because then i'll remember how we laughed
and push the rest from my mind.

do you want to be invincible?
*why don't you ask achilles?

it always hits trees before the ground:
sunlight, rain, snowfall, moonlight.

last night i forgot myself;
told you that sun burns but doesn't warm,
rain wipes memories and leaves amnesia,
snow muffles what rain doesn't drown,
and moonlight does what the sun couldn't:
scorches skin to ashes.

last night i forgot myself;
told you how i was meant for the stars,
not the planet beneath.

last night i forgot myself
but you offered to be the trees
if i would be your earth.

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.

do you hear me, stars?
draw me into your constellation, cassiopeia.
tell me how you were once beautiful.
i'll tell you that you still are.

do you hear me, sky?
orion hunts comets, supernovas, galaxies.
every night, he catches them all.
he lets them go alive.

do you hear me, moon?
tonight perseus and andromeda escape
to the milky way, sing over neptune.
feel them in venus' dunes.

do you hear me, earth?
tomorrow i'll count the countless stars.
if you knew how to measure infinities
you'd discover our worth.

do you hear me, stars? (i know you do.)
hercules, break open my heart.
teach me the secrets inside.

we die, and the stars watch. let them perish, venus whispers to mercury. see what they have done.

nebulas look at us and laugh at our "rebirth". they know that something as stained as this cannot - will not - come again. humanity was the galaxy's mistake and now it must be blotted out with fusion.

perhaps not all of them are vindictive. (far-off in the sky, andromeda mourns the loss of her story. virgo keens to cancer as they cry silent stardrops.) but for the most part, the universe celebrates our demise.

once upon a time, we worshiped the earth, but now we slumber on as the world crumbles. the planet will not wake us.

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.

i am tired of being tired.
i am tired of being.

these dreams can never be realized.
these emotions will crash and burn.
these thoughts drive me insane.

i am tired of imagining
better days,
better years,
better lifetimes.
i am tired of imagining
worlds not at war.

i am tired of my mind whirling
and rushing and breaking
over and over and over -

"let me go."
"never."

i am tired of being tired.
i am tired of being.

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.

people forget
that in order to rise
you had first to fall

your love is my epidermis.
it's the largest ***** in my body,
covering me head to toe,
hair follicles dotted
amongst smooth skin.

you're my intestines, baby,
because stretched out
you're longer than you appear.

when you whisper to me
it's like my liver -
your words galvanize,
purifying my existence.

and we come together like
the chambers of the heart,
like the phosphorus bonds in my
deoxyribonucleic acid,
like dead skin cells
making my hair longer.

we come together like my teeth
when i chew pepperoni pizza.

no matter how many times i fall,
by my mistake or someone's push,
i will rise again.

i'll rise with blood staining the ground;
with the taste of iron on my lips;
with the knowledge that
you can't fool me twice -

and when i rise...
castles will crumble beneath my fists.
oceans will rush to greet my blood,
for my body and the sea
share the same kind of power.
i'll pour magma onto the cities
and build them anew.

after the fall,
i will be better than before,
and the ones who pushed me down
will be nothing more than
faces in a crowd.

perhaps i should thank them.
without my collapse
i would not have remade
myself or the world.