my future partner,

Hi, I’m anna. I guess we’re co-writing this chapter of our lives together. I’m sure it’ll be epic. It takes a while for me to viscerally latch onto another being, so congrats to you for stealing my heart
because if I’m with you, that probably means I really love you.

I like sushi a lot, empty bookstores, and tea sipping sessions with my cat, xiaoxiao, who you will probably hear me talk about twenty-four seven. I hope you’re a cat person.

Within the realm of the arts, I like to write poetry and play piano. But my secret hobby is photography. It’s the best way to know someone without really knowing them. And if you hurt me, I’ll probably create an entire musical composition or a playlist of poetry about it. But I’ll forgive you instantly.

I might make mistakes, too. For instance, I’m horrible with directions, remembering events, deadlines, or anything unrelated to pedantic learning. My erratic and changeable moods can be quite the predicament as well, but I promise to be as tolerable as I can be through my storms.
I’m a biomedical science major with a minor in neuroscience. Assimilating an array of medical innovations, education, and terminology is, personally, my zenith of academic interest. I have a love and longing to help others. But sometimes, moving towards this ultimate vocation is strenuous and I do hope you understand how much medicine means to me. This means late night MCAT study sessions, mountains of neuroscience books, stacks of terminology notecards, homework, and paramounts of stress.

But I want to work on that. I promise that whatever I love, I love to a seemingly boundless depth- “from the tip of my apex and beyond,” if you’re into medical puns. I promise I’ll take you out to dinner, plan cute dates, and spend as much quality time with you as I can. I promise, we’ll travel to so many places, eat all the food we can in all the countries we visit, dive in every ocean we can find, and fly over every country we can point to on a map.

Most importantly, I promise to give you reasons to continue the chapters in your book. Because I struggle with that too.
Whether it be in a month, a year, a decade, or a lifetime...

I promise to love you, see you soon

I stare at the ceiling
drained
by all the things I didn't do
Tasks and obligations are notecards
wedged between collections of thoughts
slowly taking up space on my shelf
until nails give and wood splinters
Favors are rough, leathery bookmarks
dominating Bible-thin planner pages
straining and bending
until schedules fan out
in a fat, perfect circle
of endless anxiety

After Pamela Sutton’s “Forty”

Since when are words lost, numbers dominating?
Until today, it was vernacular, not mathematics.
All changed at 18
when numbers engulfed my life like a tsunami.
1 life.
1 drive to school, traffic on the 405, 25 minutes;
10-minute parking; first class at 8.
8 dollars per hour x 3 day work week = no shopping.
Under my parents’ life insurance,
for now.
One life.
One dream of commencement, a sea of black and gold;
students as adults, graduating, growing up,
careers: the only things that matter now.
One dream of wheeling a patient into the OR
and he grasps my hand.
One saved life.
66 specialties for a nurse.
8 stories in CHOC Hospital;
279 beds.
One goal for everyone; nurses, patients, families—
disease-free, healthy.
One hospital specializing in children;
one in Orange, thousands of facilities.
One late night in Riverside the kitchen fluorescents
slowly brings the eyes of two, one father, one daughter,
to a close.
58 notecards, handwriting messy and smudged.
12 prefixes, 37 roots, 9 suffixes.
44 years: 1 student: Dad.
The point where my future was clear.
One goal, one career,
one life.
The subtle hum of the white lights lulls us to sleep
as the room slowly darkens.

September 2013

Homework is inspiration,
written in secretly,
between the lines of due dates,
and boredom.

Listening to music,
whilst studying a sad song,
is my favorite pastime.

Melodies written in poetic prose,
I find them stashed between notecards
of memories I haven't organized.

A folder filled with expressive mathematics,
hides the secret of
a hidden prompt.


And somewhere along those empty desks,
and tattered mess,




I find myself, haunting the hallways of the hollows in my mind...

































once more.



Truly, boredom is the true inspiration, for without it, we would not be motivated to find one.

I'd like to place a cigarette between your lips, cup my small hands around it
and proclaim that you are a writer living in a small apartment in the city.
You wear trench coats and I follow on your tails, doing my best to appear pretty.
But your words are soggy like the suede of your clearance shoes
that have stepped in the puddles between blocks striving
to get you through to the next privately owned book store
where you leave half-written poetry on notecards
and slip them into J.D. Salingar's fingertips
without having had read a single book he has written. (Neither have I.)

The snow outside my small window had just started to fall again
coating the frozen grass with a fresh white blanket that only encouraged me to stay snuggled up in my bed
under layers of fuzzy fabric. The sounds outside that condensation covered window
started to fade as my alarm clock ticked to another early hour of the morning.
        I should be sleeping
but instead I'm trying to study notecards for my anatomy exam in-between checking my phone
hoping you responded to that message
I sent a thirty seconds ago.
            One minute,
      two,
                   four
minutes later I’m struggling to remember where a protein is made
because I can’t drag my eyes away from the same, black screen that’s been staring back at me
since I sent that message five and a half minutes ago.
I give up on memorizing the functions of an organelle and turn out my light
trying not to focus in on how your hair would look
with little white flakes speckling it.
            Eight minutes
after I was picturing the outline of your face, imagining the perfection in every curve and line
I’m comforted by the faint scent of cigarettes on your skin and your hands grabbing my hips
as your body pushes against mine. I forget all about the snow
coming in through the opened window beside where we were
whispering back and forth in the dark room only illuminated by a random car passing by the building.
Breathing in deeply attempting to flood my brain with what I was feeling,
kissing the nicotine seeping up through your skin, praying it circulates through my blood
      and holds me over until the next time the snow comes down
and you blanket me like the white powder covering the frozen ground outside.

when I was in the fifth grade
we were told to put our names on notecards
and to pass them around the class
so that each student could write
one nice word
about each of us in turn
and I had a crush on a boy
and I wrote "nice" on his notecard
and he wrote on my notecard
"mediocre"
and to this day my heart doesn't know
if it is more in awe that he knew such a word
or if it is offended and crushed
and five kinds of hurt
and boys are dumb anyway
and I constantly wonder
how mediocre I am

Notecards strewn across the table
Like postcards of why I'm unable
To study Biology.
Okay...it's because you're unavailable
No need for psychology
I'm clearly enamored
And you noticed so quickly
How your stare made my heart hammer
If you are anything but what you are
My expectations dampered
I see a brightly shining star
Able to handle
Everything we are
I think no other holds a candle

The thing is.
I'm really, very good
At being by myself.

I'll never forget that wild sense
Of freedom, like the red seas parting
The first time I traveled alone
At age 17.

Just like
When you came back
I cried. Your limbs on top of me
Freedom and my own identity
Ripped from
Me.

They wrote about me in my schools newspaper
Before my soon to be college boyfriend
And I dramatically parted ways
That I would be by your side
In Greenwich Village
Selling YOUR art.

I found a note
It said your name twice
I write storylines on notecards now
No need to reassure myself

Because I stand and waft in the wind
So well, so good on my own.

And there are people
That never ever experience this feeling
Of total and complete aloneness
That I have taken a liking to
Claiming it as my hiatus
A willful strength that echoes
It will come to be in time
In time
In time.

I want so much
I wanna do so much
My body lingers and yelps
Plentiful urges
And I board the plane alone
'Cuz I'm so good at it.

So don't tell me mama or whomever
That I'll meet a handsome man
I don't ******* care
It just will be

But I love me.
And that's all I really need.

Oh my
I seemed to have left my most important idea
At home
It's probably somewhere in my room
Hidden under a hoodie
Or nestled between a stack of useless notecards
Oh my
Should I go get it?
But that'd botch my master plan ..
I planned on running away
With my intellectual property
To China
Where I could mass produce for cheap.
And display my love child
To the public
But I can hear my idea crying ..
Emerged deeply in sorrow
Frost bitten from my cold intentions
To exploit the newfound glory

In crowded halls, ivy clad, walk the sleepless zombies - the walking dead.
They’ve come to grapple, the chosen few, in trials by pen and pencil too.

Long ago we quietly agreed to trade studies and stress for a lives of ease.
The fire of competition burns within, a pyre fueled by challenge and adrenaline.

We’ve been grinding from morning’s light to dark midnight, fueled largely by tasty caffeine's bite.
Sleep’s a distant memory, that’s been swapped for all-nighters, notecards and highlighters.

Professors who’ve taught us now plant briar-like, trickster-questions, to fraught us.
Have we synthesized it all - the labs, lectures and quotes, the chapters, quizzes and notes?

The hours we’ve spent, dissecting texts, parsing equations, crafting essays - pay off now.
Or don’t - the clutter of fact, theory, and tensors will separate the scholars from the pretenders.

But fear not, dear reader, for we’re tough, seasoned cowgirls and this is just another rodeo.
True, we chew erasers not tobacco and ride desks or lab stations, not bucking broncos
But some are thrown, bruised and scarred - finding their future careers discarded.

We’re required to hand-write our test essays out, a trap that negates AI with age-old foolscap.
We know the challenge, we’ve studied and crammed, to tackle the hurdle of ‘top-tier’ exams.

Beyond the stress beacons the sweet release - of holiday parties and presents that please.
But perhaps the sweetest possible tease, is the promise of slumber and weeks study free.

i played the keys in the sky in hopes you would hear me.
i laid out notecards of things that would make you proud of me,
all in order,
all for you.
your voice will always sound like the sun,
whether it be on the hottest day in texas
or it be on a beautiful autumn day.
i know that since your presence in my dreams is gone now too,
you're finally up there.
all light and peace and happiness,
living without fear or anxiety
or sadness.
just visit now and then okay?
do you promise to change streetlights that aqua pearl color again?
do you promise to make yourself near enough to feel your energy as a hug when we need it?
i read in books that it's really nice up there.
let my little brother hold your hand,
let my grandmother make you food.
please be happy up there.