Different* people, react *different *ways.

Some of them, will stand still, and silent, and tall. They will make you think they are invincible. They will take your bruises, and accept your words, and they will retain their silence until it is all they believe. They will wrap their pain in darkness and shadows and glints of rain, until they fade away. And only then, will you notice the path destruction you left in their wake.

Others, will cower and flinch away. Weak, you will call them. Brave, someone will contradict, to wear their emotions so care-freely. You will stop, at some point. It is no fun, after all, to torture someone who never fights back. And it is obvious, too, too obvious to avoid getting caught for long. Will they fade, or shatter, or hide, or smirk? It depends. You will not always face the consequences.

The inexperienced ones, will fight back. Will match you blow for blow for cut for cut for life for life for death for death. An eye for an eye turns a whole world blind, but this has never been a fair fight. You have always had the upper hand, so you will always win. Time is a matter of opinion and resistance. You will eventually, crush their soul. But they fought back, and they fought against you, so justification is your dominate opinion and emotion, not regret, or fear, or remorse, not anything else.

There are more. Variants upon variants of everyone who didn't deserve your brand of torment. Variants of the bullet proof vests, and the children, and the soldiers.

The utterly helpless ones, will turn. You will beat them down, but somewhere, somewhen, they will become you. They will become the damnation of the freaks and outcasts and misfits, they will crave power and acceptance and use fear to gain it, they will inflict pain on others to starve out their own. If you meet them, perhaps you will understand what you did. Or perhaps you will join them, or cower in fear at your once-upon-a-victim.


Were you them, once?
                            humiliated, and scared, and bitter, and rejected?


Will I become you, someday?
                                 *torturous, and cruel, and cold, and powerful?

Once upon a time,

there lived a little girl with a red cape,
who laughed at much and cried at little,
whom every one called, "Red Riding Hood."

there lived a beautiful maiden with kindness in spades,
who lived with her vile stepmother and stepsisters,
whom every one called, "Cinderella,"
after the ashes left in her hair from cleaning the fireplace.

there lived a genie in a lamp,
who traveled across the lands from hand to hand,
whom every one called, "genie,"
because none knew it's name,
for it had been lost long ago to time.

Right now,

a man climbs Everest,
a woman wins a tournament,
a child is marked as a genius.

we have their names,
sealed in our memories.

as is only right.

When a few hundred years of time have passed,
They'll say,

Once upon a time,

there lived a man with great determination,
and no small amount of love for climbing,
whom everybody learned to call, "Everest Man."

there lived a woman who dodged every insult,
and practiced until she almost collapsed,
whom everybody called, "Yume,"
because of her inability to stop dreaming.

there lived a child,
who grew up in many different places,
whom everybody called, "prodigy,"
because that was what the child was,
and the child's name was eventually lost to time.

Right now,

we haven't anything to say,
because the future isn't over yet,
and nor will it be,
until they talk about us around the campfire,
saying,

*Once upon a time...

There are things you're not supposed to, things you shouldn't do.
things that happen anyway.

   You shouldn't throw words like a knife,
             at the one person who cares about you,
             and twist it in so the wound
             doesn't just leave a mark butburns
             just because
             you hurt enough to need something to lash out at, and she's it.

   You shouldn't force someone to grovel,
            years on years every time he sees you,
            because he might have broken your heart but
            he's done near everything except move a mountain
            to try and mend it since yet --
            all you see is the past.

   You shouldn't have a heartbreaking conversation
            that lasts through to 2 o'clock in the morning, not when
            your daughter
            is listening, not even hidden by the shadows,
            tears streaming down her face and breathing uneven but quiet
            because neither of you notice her but it's too late to escape now.

But you do.

            (and everything is perfect until it all comes falling around you)
and then it isn't.

                     (because all you ever are is unfailingly human)
and that's never enough, is it?

Sometimes, you forget that you are not drowning alone,
the murky water and
the kelp and
its attempt to latch on and
drag you further beneath the surface -

    you, all alone in you misery, (but that's alright because hard as it is you know how to save yourself)


and sometimes, you get a glimpse of someone else drowning next to you.















*Today, you do your very best to catch them.

The instant before the bombshell hits, that's when you see it.
                                                             ­                                 hear it.

So the moment before it drops on you, you know.
And then it hits, and...
Well.
You're gone.
Just. Like. That.


But sometimes, the bomb doesn't explode right at the moment it hits.
sometimes, you're in just the right place, and you live to see another day.


Still, you got some warning -- about half a second's worth.
(or if you blinked or you sneezed, then maybe
    all you got was a snap you didn't hear. maybe
    all you got was a last thought like every other
                                          thought you'd ever had,
the kind of suddenness that is sometimes a mercy.)


But what about the people
who saw the explosion in the distance,
watched it play on loop on TV?
But what about the people
who care, about you,
who find out after the bombshell has hit,
who feel their heart skip a beat in their chest
when their brain puts together the pieces?


And when it misses you --
when you get back up, somehow still relatively whole --
what is that going to do to the
people you care about, on the day that they stop.
being near-misses?


truth is:
you're not thinking about other people's calamities,
not the instant before it hits.


But I'm
              still
                       here. And I'm wondering
if there's a way: to pause them all,
every moment cascading before it fades away
in free  
           f
               a
                   l
                      l.

Because the hits. keep. coming.
and i'm here,
                        still.
but i can't keep on taking them like i'm used to.

And this, it is all your failings, all the ways you cannot hide:

Biting your lip to stop tears until that stops working, then using it to block frowns in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the former;

Blinking too fast to stop tears, and realizing, then, that you can allow your eyes to fill up with water, and so long as they don’t fall -
no one will notice.

Breathing desperately through your nose or not at all, to pretend the panic doesn’t exist, so it can consume you later, alone and vulnerable and afraid, rocking back and forth on various surfaces of floor. (Because you have convinced yourself it is your curse to bear alone, because bringing people pain for when they help you is not your idea of giving back to the world - (and the world owes you nothing, and if it did, it would not be this.)

Basking - or at least, accepting, compliments of others, in order to detach yourself from them more completely - (because the best way to hide is to make them believe you’ve gotten better, to make their worry dissipate and turn to some other better-deserving cause, for them not to realize this precarious state, because you are still only half way on the wagon, because without them you are far more likely to fall off - but these are not the things you want them to understand, you who are burden enough already, arguments aside, and know it.)

And because you keep secrets.
Theirs, and everyone else’s, and your own.
(Once, it was the weight of being all of their confidants that crushed you - now it is being your own.)

You can lie.
Not callously, not yet -
but you have gone beyond necessity,
have gone past only lies which could be considered kind.

And you have gone beyond feeling,
beyond the always soul-crushing guilt;
beyond the point where you have an intact fear of death;
beyond the point of being selfless,
of accepting help from others only when they genuinely want to,
and only when you desperately need it.

And what might terrify you,
  (other than the discovery of this)
  (other than them leaving)
is that they think you are still good.
still kind, still nice, still theirs
(and you are utterly petrified, of hurting them to save yourself.)

Because the nice ones flow under the radar, and the kind ones have the most power. And the difference, between you, and them, is that they do not know it, like you didn’t know it, and now you do - and here you are, using it to your own advantage. And by the time their belief no longer blinds them to your failings -
by then, it will be far too late.

You make cookies in the night time, as the sky goes from dark to black.

You take out your ingredients: your flour, butter, sugar, salt;
you measure them less carefully than you should
throw in an extra touch of cinnamon for flavor.

You look at the consistency, at how much (too much) butter there is,
at the way chocolate melts on your fingers,
oven heat wafting in your face.

You mix and match ingredients, crack an egg,
try not to think about how you've been here before.

Your first batch goes in, eight gloops of batter in what should hold four,
and you pace around, make yourself another cup of coffee.
Try to avoid the fact that you're only hurting yourself.

You're on batch seven, cup five, when you switch to water,
when enough batter has been made you can start to wash the dishes.
And still, here you are: late at night and washing dishes, alone.

(And the familiarity is making the hole in your chest sink down,
lower and lower -- like it wasn't low enough already.)

If there was a checklist, it would go:
  1. Have you been eating consistently?
       (No, not proper meals. But I'm trying.)
  2. Have you been sleeping well, or enough, lately?
       (No, not really. But it's inconsistent, so at least there's that.)
  3. Have you recently had a panic attack?
       (Yes. Yesterday. Twice.)
  4. Have you been feeling miserable or unspeakably sad, lately?
       (Yes. I've spent the past three days on the edge of tears, but that's fine.)

You finish the dishes, and you arrange them, neatly,
pull on the oven mitts again and take batch eight out of the oven.
Your podcast has ended so you take out your earphones, one batch left,
and the silence of the air around you is
stifling.
              suffocating.

(You did this for a year, once.
You had an abundance of baking ingredients,
                      an empty house,
                            an inability to sleep.
You asked your friends what baked goods they liked,
and then you'd give them as birthday presents.
Because you had the time.
Because you didn't have to think about buying a gift.
Because it gave you something to do with your hands.
Because seeing your friends' faces light up, even just for a moment--
                            it thawed the misery, just a bit.)

Your eyes sting, but you don't cry, as you turn the oven off,
start to stack the cooled cookies into tupperware containers.
You scrub and scrub at your cutting board turned cooling rack,
until only a hint of chocolate imprint remains,
look at the creations you've made,
and try to feel proud.

Sometimes, you feel so young, so fragile --
         you're going to break apart, and shatter
          into a million, billion, pieces, enough
          so you can't ever be put back together --
but somehow, you always are, and so here you are still,
far too old.

Crying while sleeping,
Dying while breathing,
Hiding while living.

But it's starting to get better now, somehow.

And -- it's strange. Not being miserable.
Foreign, to sleep through the night;
Odd, to be able to laugh so easily,
New, to not always be terrified.

Strange, but good. Right?
Except you don't know how to live like this,
when your hands wouldn't stop shaking
for five hours last Wednesday,
and two last Sunday and just Yesterday,
and you couldn'tbreathe and couldn'tsee,
but in this world, you returned still intact.
Still able, to see the view on the horizon,
which, you couldn't, before.
(it's Beautiful.)

So you can't be shattered glass,
Because your jagged pieces
Don't cut you, anymore,
Don't steal blood, out from your veins --
Just poke, and ****, and pierce,
make you fall down to your knees,
but allow you to get back up,
however slowly.

And so maybe, you're an archetype of clay.
The glass that was half-empty
ran wrong in the kiln,
melded with that ***, over there,
sitting collecting dust
until it got fired by accident,
got transformed, into something stronger.
Better, maybe. Less breakable, definitely.

And this item of misshapen pottery,
You are not suddenly invincible.
You do not even want to be,
Can barely move in this new skin,
Can barely understand yourself,
when you can feel your jagged pieces,
sometimes, just beneath the surface --
except now, often encased, entrapped.
The clay is starting to save you, and
Maybe, you're starting to believe that, let it.

Because you texted your friends,
on Wednesday and Sunday and Friday,
with a seven hour time difference,
hands trembling and unsteady,
and you said, please.
please, convince me that I'm okay.
And they told you they couldn't
but they did, and you're pretty sure that otherwise,
you would have been swept away to an incinerator.
And be gone, right about now,
instead of glued together, and kept,
become partially ceramic.

And this is a thing you will not forget.

Maybe, someday, you'll be an alloy of steel,
or an un-cracked cup, or blackened metal,
or even wood, splintered but growing.

Or you could stay like this.
Could learn how to live, again,
without the helpless sense,
of your own desperation choking you constantly.
Til everything good
isn't quite so foreign to you.

You'll learn how to be better, and maybe it'll stick.
(because afterall, you hated it,
      always being on the edge of tears,
      and constantly fake smiles,
      not being able, to see the light in day,
but you're used to it, your own fragility.)

You're scared it's not going to last.

I am an optimist,
as designated by my friends.

Everyone dies eventually, says one, no matter who they are, what they do.
But everyone is alive right now, I reply, everyone alive, is not dead yet.

I am an expert at adaptation,
according to my parents.

It looks like we'll be moving, offers my mother, with a hesitant smile.
Where to? I ask, eyes sparkling, smile seemingly real.

I am a genius,
if my grandparents are consulted.

You're taking three languages, and two math classes? she exclaims, again.
Yes, grandma, I repeat, rolling my eyes internally.

Truth be told,
I am an optimist, if someone insists on being pessimistic.
I am good at adapting, when the need arises.
I am a genius when I work hard, though only to my grandparents.
I am whatever the world perceives me to be, until I change its perception.

Yet then I still am, as the world perceives me, they simply perceive me differently.

You built a house out of dominoes and Jenga blocks, and it still took you by surprise when it all came shattering down around you.

In all fairness, it’s been a long time coming.

In all fairness, you caught pieces, from time to time.

But you wanted to hold onto something, because everything you ever knew only told you that the only way to make a good thing was to burn the bad thing down, rebuild it from the ground up. And you just wanted to be able to be fixed.

People are not houses. They do not survive the fire or the burn or the smell of acrid smoke. They can not be reborn like phoenixes from the ashes.

You flirted with denial longer than you should have. You let the streams of I’m fine It’s okay That’s great Everything’s good. I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m alright. I’m fine, really. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. bleed into and over each other until your lies clashed a little too close, and people started to peer in with suspicion.

Rule 1 of denial: deny.
Rule 2: lie until you believe it.
Rule 3: don’t let anyone suspect.
Rule 4: minimize the damage.

Your house fell into rubble with a phone call at the end of a good day.

Because it wasn’t really a good day, just a good enough day, because you ate lunch and dinner, because your hands shook a little bit, because you had only a small headache. Because things weren’t worse, and they could have been.

You aren’t fine.

You’re breathing, and you’re going through the motions. And you don’t intend to die any time soon.

You’re existing, but you aren’t fine.

A stack of dominoes, and a pile of haphazardly stacked Jenga blocks. So build back a complete house, without the collapse. Add in glue, or safety pins, rope. Take a step back, sometimes, observe. When you see a fissure, hold steady and fix the crack. Do not avert your eyes.

You are not fine.

I am learning how to smile and mean it.
I am learning how to say I miss you and not let the desperation choke me.
I am learning how to cry less in dark rooms, and laugh more in sunlit rain.

  I am learning to catch myself before I fall --
I am learning not to fall.

And most of all, I am trying, overall, to be  b e t t e r.
(please, please - let it be enough.)

It is so strange (beautiful)
to rediscover
all the reasons
you fell in love with her
in the first place


(and realize they're all still true.)

I wonder, sometimes, how the world can have so many secrets.

Perhaps, I would be happier if I was ignorant. If you, and everyone else, did not come, whispering into my ear...
           fears, lies, the wrongs of the past, your deepest insecurities

Perhaps it is my face that makes you - all of you - trust me.

Or perhaps it is the way I blend easily in the background, the way I speak up only rarely.

I know enough secrets for a life time; plenty enough to drown in.
Some of them, granted, learned from behind a door, listening, but
most freely given.

You say you can trust me, that's nice.
'Fact, it's enough to make me smile.

I think I'll still keep the secrets to myself, though, even if I return the sentiment. And yeah, I do.

Sometimes, see, it's less of a burden not to know, than to see everything so clearly, and be so utterly helpless...

i'll still keep all the secrets, though, don't you worry - - exhausted of it though I maybe, i still know how to keep my mouth shut,  *how to help out when i can...

If you try to breathe, normal,
in through the nose
out through the mouth,
you know your breath will stutter,
come out in a gulping, unsteady way

Because your heart is too fast
(as always)
Your mind is too unclear,
stuck in a haze of fog.

So you will breathe
through only your nose,
keep the panic curled and tight
until you are all alone,
and it can lash out fast and furious,
and harm no one but you.

You'd been absent from where you usually sat, that picnic table that used to be so full to bursting there'd be about five people just eating standing, but today you came back, and I swear I was going to talk to you.

But then we made small talk for all of a minute, and something in me chose caution over kindness.

What I almost said:

If you go all the way down the hallway, to the very back of the building, the area where only the theater and music kids have any real reason to go, turned right of the proper theater, and enter the room at the first corner, you'd find all of us. And I'm not sure if you know of that room's existence in relation to us, so I just wanted to let you know that you are welcome, if you ever get too lonely out here.

And if I'd told you all of that, maybe you'd have followed me back to the room in question, maybe you'd have sat on the floor with the rest of every one else and watched today's pick of Star Trek or Doctor Who or something other episode.

But I think I'd have lost the courage to speak my entire my mind, and that's why I never said anything at all.

Before you do, though, I want you to understand something.

And I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just being honest. As well as trying to protect mine own.

Because that room, hidden away, with mint green carpet and chairs, and too few posters on walls; with dozens of pianos stood side by side against each other with only space for a computer beside them; with dirt brown curtains that don't match the rest of the room, and mugs hidden sporadically throughout; with the nicest, most caring, trustworthy, and brilliant music teacher you will ever meet - that room is our sanctuary.

That room is where we watch movies, burst into song, tell jokes, and occasionally do homework, yes, but it is also to that room that we flee when we're so consumed by life that we have trouble doing anything but reminding ourselves how to keep breathing.  
When we're sick.
When we're miserable.
When we're exhausted.
When everything is wrong, and nothing will ever be the same again.

What I'm saying is that that room, is our safe haven. And, granted, it could be yours too, someday. But at the moment, it's just ours.

I needed you to understand how important that was, but I wasn't sure I could really get through to you, not without offending you in the process.

No matter how strongly I felt about it, it wasn't as though I was going to threaten you, say,

Don't you dare *do anything to sabotage it.

She turns, shuffles, in the opposite direction,
Wanting -
Needing,
To get away.

Out -
of this suffocating landscape,
Where people stare,
And compliment,
And do not go away,

When all she wants,
Is to slip,
Silently past,
unnoticed,
unremarkable,
unimportant.

Eyes meet hers across the room.

She ducks,
Underneath a waving arm,

Spins,
As someone goes past,

Spies,
The nearest exit.

The eyes blink, and she is gone.

Out -
to the darkness of night,
Where there is no-one,
And there is space,
And she can finally breathe.

She turns, strides, in the opposite direction,
Needing -
Wanting,
To get away.

dear little star:
this is to say
that down below,
there exists an infinite
chasm, of the galaxy
waiting in case you slip
watching in case you fall
saying, "We are here to help."
if only you ask.

darling little star, high in the sky, a reminder--
You shine bright, and clear.
We see you and think wishes
across patches of sky, ask you
to make them come true.
But there are other stars, there,
by your side.
please-- don't shine so bright
that you extinguish your light.

dearest star, still glowing in the dark;
there isn't as much light, as there was
before. Sometimes
things flare like supernovas:
Bright and Blinding, but quickly gone.
there are less of you, less of us
than there used to be:
the nights are darker. the days are colder.
fear creeps, with tendrils like smoke
clawing and choking, echoing
its way in. You
are still there,
shining
bright.

You think you've
got it
Oh, so hard now
(And tears are streaming down your face and darkness beats at your soul)
And then you
go and
Look around
(Because all you are is one more complainer.)
And You
know full well
others have it worse,
(And for them,
you hope
they continue, to complain, because
maybe someone will listen, and
life is ruthless but death is death,
while you may as well be a ghost)
But that doesn't change your
insomniatic habits of being unable to sleep until half past one
or
your solitude of half-self-imposed loneliness because
you won't force your burdens upon your friends
or
the fact that you
cry yourself to sleep every night because
you can only mask your tears for so long.

So you
breathe in daylight like it is air
(because darkness lessens and you  must be ligherbrighter around other people)
and
fake a smile everyone believes and
(you still fall apart at night).


you like to think that the night might be forgiving (because nothing else is)
and you
Hope your
silent complaints
*might actually make a difference,
Even if
overall
the world has
just as many
Complainers
as before.

It's cold, today,
and the wind smells like rain and mildew and sadness and tears.

It was warm, yesterday,
and the air tasted like sunlight and rainbows and hugs and smiles.

It's going to snow, tomorrow,
and the atmosphere will be like stars on steroids, with wishes and hopefulness.

The day after that, they'll be a storm.
and the ground will be all that's left, crushed, stranded, and alone,
like everything will end up being,
with kids crying on the streets,
and freezing all alone.

Tomorrow, though, it's going to snow.

The bravest are the ones who stand up for themselves.
They are my friends, known and unknown, who are made to feel small.
And they feel every blow as it hits them,
as it tears through their spirit,
through everything they thought they were -
And then they let their roots be planted and regrown in tainted ground,
re-learn corner by corner of this once home,
until the walls are no longer monsters, waiting to jump out and attack --
take it back for themselves.

And shielding others is one thing, but standing up for your self -
Standing up for yourself, there are paper thin walls.
Standing up for yourself, you have everything left to lose.

And yet they stand, on their own two feet,
perhaps trembling, perhaps crying, perhaps desperately wanting to hide,
but still they stand and say, "You have done me wrong."
Say, "This was not something I deserved."
And the strength grows back into their bones like armor,
this new, beautiful, unwavering, shield of courage,
that never should have been taken away.

You told me I was worthless, so I put my friends and family first.
You told me I was stupid, so I learned all that I could.
You told me I was weak, so I learned how not to cry.
The only thing I didn't learn, was how to say goodbye.

In the scheme of things however,
Perhaps the world is fair,
if only for the fact -
It let me leave, not you.

I found the note you wrote, a decade after the fact,
You say I'm the only foreigner you know, and that's true, I suppose,
You say you'll miss me, well, only time truly knows,
You say I was the kindest one you ever knew -
I suppose, if nothing else, you taught me how to lie, there, that's true.

So it’s fall, now.
It’s fall, all sweater weather and Halloween and chilly but not quite cold —

the weeks are upon us and not long later it will be winter.

It’s still as-of-yet-changing color of trees fall, though, for now, yet I’ve never fallen so fast as I have during this one.

Flowers, grass, began to fade, began changing their colors away and so did I, ending summer with misery, uncertaintness, and almost passing out (no, not drunk, never touched a drug in my life) in a place where no one knew my name - but I clutched at walls and forced breath through air ducts until the colors rearranged themselves in my vision.

Rain started falling, then, fast and furious of a thunderstorm turned typhoon and hurricane, while I caught insomnia full blast, caught utter misery too, the kind where it takes all of your energy to look apathetic, and you can’t smile - it took all my energy not to cry.

There are warm days too, when ****** it all to hell because sometimes things are beautiful. It taught me I had friends, but more than that how to hide well; how nothing ever goes away, how things get worse - but if they aren’t hidden people will just worry more, and fading to the background is a blessing in disguise - constant scrutiny is exhausting. And lack of pain (fake or no) is beautiful.

At the ****** of fall, the trees are bare, and daylight is scarce. And I’m here all hung out dry, not even waiting, now, just watching it all pass by.

And sometimes, the most inevitable things contain the most dread, too.

Winter ends. Spring follows it. Cherry Blossoms bloom and everything else just grows, until summer sneaks up on them. And by then, I’ll be long gone, uprooted by the last dredges of cold air.

Sorry.
            Goodbye.

                            ­  Thank you.


See you again, maybe, if I’m lucky?

Everything thing is spinning, round and round and blurring into nothingness -

(except it's not, feet planted firmly on the ground and

the world is not supposed to be this way)

Blackness. Punctured by white and broken into pixels -

(a European painting in dots and dashes and absence of color and

there were shapes, before, of people, distinct lines drawn)

Swaying. Back and forth, little enough to avoid notice -

(hand reaching out, palm against wall, cold and

if I faint to the floor perhaps this will break my fall)

Sound is petering out, growing softer and softer into the distance -

(everything is a dull thrum, world dissolving and dissipating around me and

suppose I will have to work out the instructions on my own)

Shaking. Shivering, really, and it is not even chilly -

(boiling hot, sweat and heat suddenly overwhelming and

will they notice me then, when the cup shatters into a million pieces from trembling hands)


Breathing is hard.

(heart is thumping, surely it will give out soon, nothing is supposed to be this fast and

breathe in. breathe out. breathe in. breathe out. breathe in. breathe out.)


The world is normal, again -

(there is color. noise. people. air, in large quantities. no swaying and shaking and spinning and

one day it will fail to come back.)

Teach me how to breathe,
in and out,
over and through.

Teach me how to see,
when my eyes are closed,
and only black remains.

Teach me how to hear,
the things I do not know,
the things I wish to remain ignorant to.

Teach me how to feel,
through stares of freezing cold,
and hearts of fading warmth.

Teach me how to smell,
what is safe, what is not,
the difference of a landmine,
over a child's buried treasure.

Teach me how to taste,
the danger that approaches in the air,
the calm which arises from sloshing waves.

Teach me how to live,
how to live life to its fullest -

Teach me how to live,
for the day I have nothing to live for.

Teach me what I know,
for the days when I forget.

Drag me in, please.
Make me dance the night away.

Push me over the cliff,
so I'll no longer fear the fall.

Take my hand, please, make us both smile.

The world is seldom a happy place,
but I'd rather like to enjoy it with you tonight.

The first time anyone without your blood flowing through their veins kisses you, you’re seventeen.

It’s a hug, a quick peck on the forehead – there is nothing romantic about it.

The only time you kiss anyone back, it’s exactly a year later, same person, the same action reversed.

It means goodbye, means I’ve missed you; I’ll miss you – there is nothing romantic about it.

(These actions, both of them, happen under dimly lit streetlights early in the night, promises best kept.)



Growing up, your grandfather, on holiday visits, peppers your face with kisses. His whiskers scratch your skin, and you laugh, pull away because you’re ticklish. Your parents infrequently bestow side kisses to your cheek; your grandmother does the same. Your other relatives hug you when they see you, and you take it with the good grace you’ve been taught.


You grow up in a country where you have two parents, and a chasm of cultural differences.

There is an unspoken rule: you do not touch people in public, do not kiss or hold hands – it is shameful.

There is an unspoken rule: hugs are for children, the youngest and most fragile – the strong stand alone.

There is an unspoken rule: friends are acquaintances, and family is blood.

(the word, I love you, here, is sacred. It’s for married couples, to say to each other out of view of public society. It’s for mothers to whisper down to their babies as they clutch them, still young enough to cradle. It’s reserved for pages in books of sappy romantic novels; it is not for every day use.)


Visiting your extended family a continent away during breaks, you accept hugs out of instinct, common practice. Your parents, at home, give you good night rhymes and packed lunches; walks to the train station and lessons on how to ride a bike. They do not say we love you, we are proud of you; do not smother you with hugs or prevent you your independence – they do none of these things until you are older, until you live in a different country with less rigid societal expectations. (Dad helps you make swords out of paper and cardboard and mock fights with you during the day; Mom’ll come up to tuck you into bed, scold you for reading past lights out – it does not mean they love you any less.)


The first time anyone you aren’t related to hugs you, you must be 12. Maybe 13.  

It’s sudden and unexpected, but you go to an international school, now, and so it keeps on happening.

By 16, you can be reasonably expected not to flinch away, but it’s a close thing, a learned thing.

Your friends keep on at it though, and you don’t hate the contact, just don’t much understand it --

It’s comfort, you learn, holding someone close. It’s comfort, this contact, something meant to steady you.



People around you let the words “I love you” fall from their lips, like they are not precious things, these casually tossed away pieces of emerald. ‘Love ya,’ they say, teasing and joking, so you bump shoulders and smile and never say the words back. (Here is the thing: you are 13 and smiling falsely, you have moved through three schools and eight living spaces, you lose friends as you move and know better than to ever think they will stay with you.)


But here you are, just shy of 17, your friend for the past three and a half years moving away:

You stutter over the words until you manage to say it, the phrase rolling out unevenly -- your friend rolls her eyes at you, but you follow with, I’ll miss you, say, keep in touch, mean all the words that come out.

Here you are, 17, realizing what good friends you have left, these friends you’ll be leaving behind.

So you say I love you and mean it, cling to them until you have to go – in another year, you will do the same, as they let you slot back into your place like the puzzle was never deconstructed at all. In another year, you will throw your arms around each of them, smile wide, that touch of desperation gone.

But there is a year, before that:

A desolate summer where you practice your German on unsuspecting grocery store cashiers, cry yourself to sleep at night when the gut-wrenching longing of homesickness feels too much, because you miss that country you used to call home, you miss your friends (and you’ve never had anyone to miss so terribly before.)

You have a pack of postcards, because your dad writes them, because you’ve collected them from art museums here and there, blank, waiting to be used. It is still summer, your friends are busy doing interesting things, too busy to check social media accounts, so you go old-fashioned and you write.

Hi, or Hello, you start every single one: how are you?  

You use up all the space on the back til your handwriting is almost microscopic, talking about castles, skirting around your grocery store visits, mentioning grades and what classes do you think you’ll get next year?, talking up the Capri-Suns you won’t drink, but found in novelty at the supermarkets anyway.

Love you and miss you, you end them all, heartfelt.

These are your friends: they respond in kind, through letters and pop-up cards, water-colored self-fashioned postcards and long-winded texts. These are your friends, still: you do not lose them.


You hug people more easily now, more casually, if still rarely.

You have old friends, a dent in your post-card stash alongside new ones.

You say I love you, sometimes, to people when you mean it, when your heart feels so close to bursting –

You stay quiet, others, because that has meaning too.

and here are the reasons why no one tells you to go be a third cultured person:

its not easy.

When you are one of us,
different and foreign are not even a blip on your radar,
(because my life has always been detachment - meeting and smiling and beginning to say "hi", only to have to wave goodbye.)
you will always be different and foreign, belonging to a place is a wish and not a reality, home has always meant people as opposed to a place (not that people are at all constant).
leaving is normal too, just pack your bags and go go go, doesn't matter if you never come back, onto a new place now, and goodbyes are hard -- but seldom unexpected.

when you are one of us, you are shifting and turning and never never staying, always changing and moving forward, frighteningly frighteningly fast, all impermanence and hopeful, but broken promises-- you will perhaps stay in one place for some period of time.
(you will never belong)

You switched countries the first time when you were 3.
Stayed in one place 14 and a half years,
then switched from living on one continent and visiting another,
to just staying on one (other) continent,
and flip-flopping between two countries.

The Gross Total: 3 continents;
4 countries (lived), 14 countries (visited);
3 languages, 5 schools;
10 places of living (house, home, apartment - pick a word you like.)

*And you're one of the lucky ones.

There's a word that means worn.
That means tired and unraveling, just barely holding on --

and you curl your arms around yourself
hide your face in your hands
your trembling body in corners of locked bathrooms
so you face the world intact.

Your roommate said -
she was talking about surviving,
about last year,
before the two of you even knew each other existed,
about hard thing that wrecked your lives,
that made last year ****, and she said -
"But even at the worst parts,
I think some part of me knew
that I would make it through this."
And you hesitated a second or two longer
than you should have, before replying,
"It wasn't like that for me."

You think, in a way, that you were beyond threadbare, last year.
You were falling to pieces and assisting in your own self-destruction
- and so maybe you had people, but -
you didn't know how to recover from that,
didn't even know if you could,
if you would ever be able to.
And it was hard, and work,
but you dragged yourself up to a state
where you could
stand on your own two feet.
Where you built up a coat, again,
against shattering,
against haphazardly breaking.

But what's to stop the wind from pushing?
What's to stop your threads unraveling,
one by one, til all that's left is dust?

It's different, this year.

This year isn't just a matter of your reactions -
it's all the things outside of your control
stacking up and falling over.
It's a jenga tower whose blocks call to you in connection,
whose placements you had no part in whatsoever.
It's watching, and waiting, and hoping.

But all hope runs out eventually.

Your fall is more graceful, this year.
It's slower, gentler, and almost silent.

You are so tired of people you know dying:
one after another, after another, after another.

You were sadness in rage and emptiness, this time last year.
This year, you are just sad,
in a permeating fashion.
It's not -- it isn't -- you are used to it,
You just are tired of that,
Miss people, alive people and barely hanging on people,
don't let yourself think about the others
- you're scared where that will take you -
(you can pretend to be heartless pretty well, at this point)
You miss not having the sadness with you, constantly,
(and hey, at least this year you remember what that's like)
but --
It's an I can live with it kind of habit, this year -
you are being pulled apart, but
you are keeping yourself together.

you are keeping yourself together, still.

Of everywhere you have ever lived,
you know your grandparents' kitchen the best.
Know where the silverware is kept, and the plates.
Can find the pots and pans; knives and spatulas; rags and extra aprons.
Can spot where the fancy dining-ware lies hidden away, for guests.
(and you are a stowaway, family passing by and through,
staying and leaving but always returning, never quite a guest.)

Of everywhere I have ever lived,
my grandparents' kitchen, house --
this is the only place I have always moved through seamlessly.

It's odd to think,
standing in that familiar kitchen,
tangentially following a recipe of my father's,
that I am a legacy
of things soon to be long gone.
(of course, so are we all).

For 12 years, I was the only great-grandchild,
of my father's side of the family --
first daughter of the first son of the first daughter of the youngest child
(eldest of the eldest of the eldest -- of the youngest).
I did not grow taller than my great-grandmother until I was 13,
and I thought that it was perfect -- that maybe a new child would pop into existence every time the next eldest of my generation got too tall --
my little cousin never got a chance to outgrow her.

All of your thoughts are a eulogy, not yet written.

This is the house, the house of my grandparents, where I spent almost
all my winters, at least half my summers.
This is the only house I know
with a still valid address,
long-ago etched into my memory.
This is the only house I know,
still-standing, still with its first inhabitants.
This is not a house I can stand to stay in.
Not any longer.

My (great) aunt hauls out a box of her mother's things,
slides a leather binder with school notes across to me:
they are dated in the war years, 1941, 42, 43,
years my great-grandmother stayed with her own aunt,
in order to be able to attend high school.
She slides them over to me,
to have me go over her mother's chemistry notes.
She wants them grouped together, the diagrams that go with the notes,
wants to frame them, one each for her and her three sisters,
and I, among the living, am the only one capable of deciphering them:
algebra tied to chemicals tied to method statements,
all in beautiful cursive hand-writing I can only half-read --
amidst four daughters, six grandsons, I am left the only one
who fell deep into math, deep into science,
deep enough to piece together these old, torn, scraps of paper.

And here I am a legacy of things I wished I could have known sooner.
Here, I am falling in love and falling (silently) through sadness.
Here, I am thinking, I wish. And swallowing that thought.
The dead fall silent, but the living tell stories of the dead --
People die, and you learn things you didn't know, before:
things you want to. things you don't.

My grandparents' house looks almost exactly like it used to:
same paint, same rooms, same back porch, same messy garage.
but the people inside look old, now. (but so does everyone, now.
even my parents' hair has settled into grey, worry lines into wrinkles.)
but the people inside look frail, now.
like any little thing could break them apart.
and they look at me like I am the light behind their eyes
(and I am so far, from being able to be that light).

My grandfather does not die, on that sunny evening in March of 2019.
He ends up in the ICU. He ends up sickly, but making it through.
That same, chilly morning, the one who stops breathing
is my great-grandmother.
And it is her funeral that I miss.

Sometimes, people live, and you still learn things you did not want to.
about their demons, hidden in old chester drawers sealed shut.
about their mercies, at others' expense.
about insults and grievances ricocheting in the dark --
things that would stop me cold, (and maybe they do)
if family wasn't family -- if there weren't secrets held close.

Someday, I will go back to that house that I did not grow up in.
But I spent summers, there, and winters. I spent two springs.
Someday, I will have to go back to the house
that my grandmother taught me to make cookies in.
where my mother made doughnuts, using her mother's recipe,
and my great-grandmother and I were in charge of toppings.
where my grandfather measured my height year by year on the wall,
and my father, every year, cooked up a storm.

Someday, I will return to that house
with its inhabitants
no longer living.

And yet, as time keeps on passing by:
I can not bring myself to stay in that house,
this last thing left of familiarity.
I am someone else's light, still, however reluctant.
And I am afraid, that staying there will be the thing to break me.

there is an art
to secrets

a necessity
to keeping them,
to hiding them away

like the dust under the rug
or the thing just Too Uncomfortable to talk about
that get hidden
under guilt
and shame
and fear
(this
is not
a reason
to keep them)

but there exists a thing
called protection
and something
more terrible:
love.

these are things you will die for.
sometimes, secrets fall into place
so you do not have to.

sometimes, yes, they will bury you whole
still alive, still breathing, but drowning --
there are days when they will save you
instead.

maybe the difference is just
that i can bring myself to talk about it, now,
without my whole body trying to relive it.

maybe the difference passed with the 10 year mark.
and the 11th, as it went by and I only had to blink it away,
rather than spend the whole time trying to think of anything else.

the only thing the rest of the world seems to remember
is the power plant explosion. Fukushima. Early 2010s, sometime --
(and it's almost funny, the way just about anyone at all can count through the major nuclear events in Japan: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima. Make it easy on all those people who didn't get stuck living with the consequences of them.)

I remember, 30 kilometers away from the epicenter,
the way our classroom shook on March 11th.
I remember books falling off shelves,
my classmates and I clutching at desk legs, at each other,
the floor shaking up and down, up and down, not just side to side.

I remember watching the broadcasts the next morning,
2011, and cars floating out in the ocean by Tohoku.
Homes, gone; Tsunami flood gates washed away,
High schools turning into evacuation centers,
Building ceilings collapsing as people tried to run away.

That night in Tokyo, the trains stopped.
Completely.

Phone networks went down as everyone flocked to use them,
The highways swarmed with cars,
the ground. kept. shaking.

In Tohoku, after the initial earthquake,
after the Tsunami that came up too high,
as people tried to run away fast enough, fires erupted.

And then we watched on the morning news, my family and I --
tired, but safe and sound, far enough away,
as the Fukushima Dai-ichi powerplant erupted,
killing its workers with it.

We, the fortunate foreigners outside the destruction area,
we flew out on a plane, came back a month later.

In Tokyo, where the worst of the damage
was the bent tip of Tokyo tower,
there was a water shortage,
a power outage, or two,
and the aftershocks
through the ground
didn't stop til July.

When I went up to an affected area of Tohoku -- two years later,
All of their dwellings were still temporary.
Their main export of fish, still deemed unsafe.
Their main grocery store, a 7/11 conbini.
Their population half a ghost town,
so I helped plant vegetables.
Watched, the next year, as they gained back some of their boats.
As the seas started to be safe again to fish.
As industry started to become permanent, again.

People came up with a lot of names,
for what happened on March 11th, 2011.
The Great Tohoku Earthquake
The Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami
The Triple Disasters

For all that I was safe, during it,
I still lived beside those events.
Still know that only now, over a decade later,
are people beginning (slowly) to re-inhabit
that ghost-town of radioactivity in Fukushima.

At 10, there is not much you can do, to stop an earthquake.
Or a tsunami.
Or a fire,
or a disastrous power plant explosion.

But I tried my hardest to do what I could, to help in the aftermath.

At 21, I hit the ground, go dizzy, or blackout
whenever something unexpectedly shakes:
a bridge, a bus shelter, a ladder.

The date is tethered onto me like a broken lifeboat,
something I will never be able to drift away from.

And in a way, I am furious at the world for forgetting.
For daring to look away -- but there are other events.
Other disasters, natural and man-made and in between.
And I can not keep them all scarred across my heart.

But I remember this one.
I'll keep remembering for everyone who doesn't.
And next time, I can only hope to be enough
to prevent some of the loss,
to learn and progress from the past,
until maybe
it never happens again, at all.

If there's any kind of normal anymore,
then it's you -- just you,
standing with a dish rag long after everyone else (your father)
has gone to bed, some point between 7:30 and 9:00 at night.

Things are better now,
(things are worse now)
your mother has been out of country for a week
(or 6 months and 5 days, excluding the handful of week long visits)
and you and your father are ready to leave, now,
crossed the last few items off your bucket list
(everything is the same as it was 6 months ago:
your mother is not sleeping,
your father is not sleeping,
you are both your parent's favorite confidant
for complaints against the other,
sole companion when drunk,
your mother hates her job (still),
your father is drowning in the wake
of your mother's misery (still),
and you are still (trying) failing
to hold the pieces together -
yours and theirs.)

It's March/April, so there are cherry blossoms (Sakura),
and your father says, they're beautiful
and your mother (from the video screen of your father's phone) says,
that's a lot of white (they're pink)
and you think, I guess this is the last time I will ever see this.

Your mother's been miserable for the past two and a half years, so you and your father were only half right when you figured giving her your blessing to get out of this
(god forsaken -- to your father)
(sexist, and karoshi-inducing -- to your mother)
(home, yet unaccepting and soul-crushing -- to you) country would help.
(And it did, but not enough and not for long.)

Your mother's world is work, new country, new culture, new language, new apartment, and talking to the two of you. (It's also sans furniture for the first three months, newly insulated heating, and living off takeout and on a futon.)

Your father's world is work, the English side of packing up and moving, you, figuring out his replacement, meeting friends for bike rides or dinner and drinks to say goodbye, and talking to your mother. (It's also figuring out how you'll all survive if this doesn't work out, making arrangements for everything his wife forgot in her hurry to leave, ensuring he and you make it until June.)

Your world is school, your father, the Japanese side of packing up and moving, your friends, stepping down and teaching others to replace you, and doing your part to keep your mother sane. (It's also hiding your own decent into misery, making friends just in time to lose them, and looking up the extra Japanese jargon that your father forgets he'll need.)

Your father has been wary of this country since the day he moved here - 14 years, 2 months, and 17 days ago; has hated it since the day after the final date of your expected stay, 12 years, 11 months, and 2 days past. The summer you are twelve it comes to a culmination, and your parents inhibit separate apartments for the next half-decade.

The conversation you overhear four years after the fact (a summer night when your bedroom window has been left open, near midnight, your parents talking on the balcony  it connects to) goes like this:
  You said you hated me. (Your mother.) You told me it was my fault we were stuck here.
  I have never hated you. (Your father.)
  You said I ruined your life. (Your mother, again. Voice raw, broken.)
  You didn't ruin my life, (Your father. Voice tired, like this is a recurring discussion.) you... (You can imagine your mother crying, your father wrapping his arms around her shoulders. The candle on the patio table flickering with surrounding city light, reflecting your mother's tears, the hint of silver in your father's ring.) I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I never should have said it, but you already know that. You didn't ruin my life.
  (Silence. Then your mother, again.) You said you hated me.
The conversation lasts well past 2:00 in the morning,
your parents none the wiser to your reluctant presence.
(It's not a conversation you ever wanted to hear.)

After the go-ahead for the move comes in very late August, everything ignites, speeds up to a ridiculous pace. You and your father box up the majority of your mother's apartment, and then it falls to the two of you to get rid of everything left when she leaves after another month. (It's that same month that she traverses three countries in two weeks, gets stuck in the midst of a hurricane warning- drives 10 hours across state borders to escape it, and spends her first week living in Germany forgetting most everything.)

Deciding to move and finding a school comes in October and November. You and your father miss a day of school to fly to Amsterdam and back, realize certain things are unfeasible, look at more schools, and begin to send letters. You miss a whole week by yourself in Germany, causing your mother to sleep, for once, and then catching only 2 hours yourself for a week straight (added onto panic attacks and dizzy spells) once you get back to Japan. (It’s mid-October when a school in Frankfurt indirectly says they’ll accept you, your father hands in his resignation the following week, then turns to you and asks are you sure you want to move your senior year? - and you think bit late to be asking now.)

Your mother calls everyday, and you make yourself present for it once or twice every week. (It’s mid-November before you realize that your father may miss her desperately, but you don’t. At all.) Sunday becomes packing day, and you and your father slowly pile up boxes while avoiding paperwork, accumulating trash runs to the apartment complex across the street. By March, there is a plan for getting rid of furniture in place, and most save bare essentials are packed.

I counted. Your mother starts, first to speak once the connection goes through. 80 days. So you have 80 days to go around the world and come see me.
Well, nowadays, it only takes 2 days to travel across, you quip, as your father pulls out his calendar.
Looks like you won’t have to wait that long he says, pointing at your mother’s proposed date of contact - 6/13 - in contrast to his last day of work, a week behind your final day of school, your daughter might even make it at 70, he adds (and you silently say goodbye to spending any of the summer with your friends.)
Well, your deadline is 80. (She’s not sure she’ll make it if it’s any longer.) I miss you.
Miss you too.
Love you.
Love you.
Love you too.

Come evening, you will still be the last one standing, alone except for the cold water running across your fingers and the plates that will be labeled ******* within 2 months, the wind if it decides to howl, the motor of a car if one chooses to pass your deserted street, your father if (when) he begins to shift and turn and give up on sleep. And this you can still say, is normalcy.

Breathe.
In, out.

Trouble's here, knocking on the door.

It's been waiting for a while now,
been pushed back as far as you'd allow,
Gathering together like clouds of dust
on the mantle piece, collecting rust.

Trouble's here, best welcome it in.

The worst's been done,
You've had your fun --
Nothing left now to outrun.

Trouble's here, at my feet.

Draws me in,
Makes me trip.

Trouble's here, leaving soon.

It'll come back,
To haunt you.

They tell you there are always three (at least two) sides to every story.

i.
There are three sides to every story.
The good, the bad, and--(earth, air, fire, water)--

Fire can **** you.
Fire will tell its flames to slither atop your skin, to dance prettily.
Fire will then strike, will seer your flesh from your skin,
suffocate away all your air.
Fire will consume you and leave you a burned crisp, nice and black.

don't touch, they tell you, don't touch
(you leave the glowing orb of orange alone)


Water is cold; cold enough to freeze your insides whole.
Water is also so alluring, pulling you in and
    down
      down
        down,
until you can only splutter from lack of air.
Fire burns you, but water drowns you.
Takes you far into a deep, black, nothingness of serenity,
keeps you prisoner.

swim, they beckon to you, swim
(you stay far too close to the shore)


Air is never grounded.
Air swirls and changes into gusts of wind,
Takes you off of one path and blows you onto another.
Circles you in a cyclone,
Smacks you onto the ground,
taking any breath of life left in your lungs along with it.

hold on, they yell, hold on
(you are not the one who lets go)


Earth is treacherous.
So used to its existence underneath your feet, but earth is deadly too.
Because when it moves, decides to breathe, you are nothing.
Roots twist, and plates push up against each other, dirt flies:
You are nothing but a casualty left in its wake,
as your feet give out from the unsteady ground beneath
as the buildings crumble from above
as you are left caught in between.

duck and cover, duck and cover
(desks protect no one forever)



ii.
But fire can save you, with warmth.
Water can quench your thirst, can quell a burning inferno.
Air can be gentle, too, give just enough of a directional push.
Earth can give you land to go to, can help sprout food to eat.

This is a dangerous world, things that **** you hidden in plain sight, remedies turning to chaos with no warning.

This is a beautiful world, with kids that dance in thunderstorms, and sleep easy through the night.

An imperfect world, be cautious - things are seldom only what they seem.

The elements are a double edged sword, both within one.



iii.

there are three sides to every story:(the good, the bad, and--)
Yours,
            Mine,
                       and the in between of what's left.


Once upon a time, they say, and there is always a monster in this story, lurking behind walls.


So here, have a story:

Once, there were people I loved.

Once, they were monsters.

And Once, (now) they are one and the same.



iv.
the monsters are my friends, and the victims are my blood;
the victims are my blood, and the monsters are my friends;
I call them both family.

and there have  a l w a y s  been multiple sides to every story,
always a monster to uncover and a villain to slay,
always an innocent somehow hidden beneath them,
always multiple interpretations of stories that don't get told.

the monsters are the people I've loved since before i knew the meaning of that word.

the monsters are the people I've chosen to love, chosen to stand beside, of my own choosing, of my own will.



v.
and you will call me wrong, and heartless.
and you will call me weak, and deceptive.
and I will tell you that it was the easiest choice in the world to make,
and that will be a lie.

can you sing a requiem about things not lost?
about the could've, would've, almost, that you're glad that never happened?
can i say
I don't miss never knowing what's it's like to stay in one place your whole life, (because it's something I've never done),
I don't mourn what could have happened but didn't (because we can't change the past, and who's to say it would have turned out better),
I don't mistake content for happiness (because for one they are different, and for another, content means there's still something to strive for)
can i say
I appreciate the moments when dreading the worst turned to finding the middle ground
I acknowledge that perfection does not exist except in regards to imperfection
I accept the pushing and pulling and flickering and shining and living...

can i say
i hate this (i love this)
and mean the exact same thing
because the glass is half full and half empty
and neither and either or
because it's
still a glass with water no matter every which way it's looked at

falling in love is easy.
effortless, even.
(unaware until you’ve already fallen)

staying in love is conscious
(because at some point or another, you notice it, and it either takes your breath away in awe, or it sends ice down your spine-
and you run, run fast.)

once you let yourself fall,
Completely-
then your heart is no longer yours.

(it can be a wonderful thing, two pieces of two hearts,
given away freely and replacing the other,
healing rather than harming, uniting.)

the thing about the ones
who don’t love you back, is that
you give your whole heart away,
and they slowly crush it
in return;
you do not see it until only pieces remain-
(after all, you were in love.)

the thing about the ones who
don’t love you back,
is that then, it becomes your fault -
(because who would have ever chosen to love you in the first place?)

but it’s going to take you years
to realize that it isn’t on you,
as you assemble back the broken pieces,
try to breathe with just half a soul,
start to learn that you deserve just as much love as you give.

it’s going to take time,
because now you’re afraid
that this is the story with everyone -
(you’re not sure you could survive this again)

the thing about the ones who
don’t love you back,
is that they break you.

you trust them, and their charade is flawless.
(Of course they love you,
of course this is mutual) of course
this is all your fault.

I
  i.
sometimes, being discriminated against
is
an elementary school teacher treating one of her students
like a thing to be exterminated and killed and disposed of
like the dirt under concrete she steps on everyday
~ except that dirt can be beneficial ~
because her student has a different skincolorhaircoloreyecolorappearance
than every single other student she teaches, has taught,
doesn't matter how intelligent hardworking forgiving
her student is --
and the school is letting it go
and the school is doing n o t h i n g
to stop it


  ii.
other times, being discriminated against,
is
the way their eyes pass over you.
and this is after, they tell you,
                ~ how rare, how brilliant, how exceptional ~
you are, especially considering --
especially considering how d i f f e r e n t you are.
because
you will never be considered one of them.
because you will always be considered d i f f e r e n t.
because you may be "good",
but you will never be good enough.





II
   i.
being a minority, is the word
                                            i n s i g n i f i c a n t
carved into and hammered onto you so many times
you curl into yourself
and hunch over so you look less tall than you actually are,
just so you can blend in.
just so you can avoid the stares.
so someone doesn't call you out for something you haven't done. again.


   ii.
being a minority
is never seeing yourself in those around you.
it is getting so used to being different
that those alike you, are a novelty, tucked away and hidden so far,
injustices don't matter.
one killed another
but it is history repeated all over again,
Hammurabi's Code and the rich and the powerful get fined
while the poor die.
the killer walks free, nothing but a slap on the wrist --
   the dead is the guilty party, now, the dead is the guilty.
because why would a person from the majority ever **** an innocent?





III
     i.
being a teenage girl  
is
looking old enough to look like an adult, but not truly being one yet
so choosing between jeans and shorts, and saving skirts --
skirts, dresses, for occasions when you must where them
because that way
if there are drunk men surrounding you on trains,
or enough of a collection of blood thirsty ones,
you have some protection
against wandering hands
and people who tell you your body is not your own.


   ii.
being of the female gender is also
never going places alone because
you have heard the h o r r o r stories
you have seen them
   you have experienced them
and you do not want to end up
sexually  h a r r a s e d
*                                       b e a t e n
  *                                                         r a p e d
   *                                                                ­        d e a d.


   iii.
being a woman
in a working environment,
is
  *g l a s s   c i e l i n g
                                      never shattering
never speaking too loudly or too much
for fear of being called "bossy" "loud" "obnoxious"
for fear of being fired.
being passed over for promotions because social norms disallow you
from being competetive
or having your own ideas
from having the same right to be there as the men.
from work being not profession --
but professionsecretarycleancookwifelookafterchildrenmother
all of the above.

She’s tired and clammy and hot, and her head pulses and aches,

But she gets up anyway, to go and answer the door,

And everything spins, and tilts, and whirls,
And it is a blurry mess of revolving objects,
Where she can’t see anything,

But she must act normal,

And so she stands straight,
Smiles,
And lets the words he speaks reverberate around her brain,

As her vision slowly settles back in,

Only to go away again,
When she steps down to take the package back in,

And her head throbs,
And she pushes her glasses back up her nose,
As she puts the package down,
In hopes that it will help,
And like she already knows it wouldn’t - it doesn’t,

But when she pivots so she faces the delivery man once more,

Her face is calm, and cool, and the same,

And only when she has bowed her thanks,
And he has bowed his,
And she has closed the door after him --

Does she sink against the wall,
Waiting for the dizziness to pass,

And hoping that upon it’s return, it will be no worse,

Than it already is.

It crashes and turns and churns,
blue against blue,
kelp against seaweed,
trash against sand, as it nears the shore.

It reaches out
to grab, to get, to kidnap,
her,

And he,
I,
we,
flinch,
back away,

And the waves reside,
back into the chaos of the ocean.

I used to think it was just an expression;
                          a fancy way to say really, really, really, tired.

It's a little bit more than that.

It's
                                                 ­       exhaustion.
It's
                                      defeat             and             despair.
It's
                                             ­         hopelessness.


it's putting everything you have into something, and not making a dent,
it's believing in someone when they don't even try to have faith in you,
it's feeling so tired and knowing you won't be able to fall asleep,
it's seeing the inevitable and accepting defeat,
and not even trying to resist fate because it's sad but there's no point.


that
     is what it feels like, when weariness seeps deep into your bones.

Death fascinates you, in a way that it shouldn't, because
No one is supposed to be fascinated by death.

It's the end.
The final stage.
Goodbye.

Yet no one can figure out what happens after.
If people who die, are really, truly, gone.

So yes, death fascinates you.
                                                            ­  But *you let it.

To feel numb, and nothing at all -

or

To feel everything, all at once -
and be pulled under
by your complete inability
to laugh. or even smile?