today, a handmade mug found me
and brought me home.
home is when we rang doorbells and ran.
when we sneaked into forbidden buildings
and brought back souvenirs,
just to prove we can.
ships and sailors, hide and seek,
treasure hunts until we grew weak
so out to quench the desert’s sun
we stood in line and one by one,
we cupped our two hands together
and drank our prayers
out of our handmade mug.
Following my nose
to a fragrant gazebo,
I saw rosy red.
“Come see, come see,
how beautiful she must be!”
But in the garden
she stood alone, lacking
fragrance on her own.
where is this coming from?
It can’t be this boring,
leafy green
It’s not even beautiful.
It’s not even seen.
Specks of oil sit thick on the kitchen backsplash,
seasonings scattered across
granite countertops — our family’s
miniscule studies in pointillism. I cannot
wipe them away, these memories of past
meals. Instead, I stand steady, watching as
seven years of sunrises, moonlight storm by,
tempestuous yet full of the deepest love time
can bear. Petrichor seeps in
through open windows, the tile under
my bare feet taking in the warm
dampness of freshly soaked soil. These
seconds bore witness to the utmost
happiness, to endless inner violence. I
reach out to grasp
what once was and the lines in my
palms, fragmented remnants of past
selves, tear away from my skin in a
desperate escape for salvation, to
dissolve in the impossible.
Their voices fall as the ground gives
way and water replaces earth,
scintillating under clearing skies.
Cotton rifts
hover above, their purple bellies painted
under charcoal gray tufts. Distant trills
move through silence, followed by vibrant
echoes. This is not somewhere I know.
I stumble onto wooden planks,
greeted by an island of trees, some
asleep,
some awake. We stare at each other, a lazy
river flowing between us — they know
where I come from, what life lies furrowed
in my hands. They know that time taught
me how to apparate, but never how to stay.
They sway, sending sweetened air to soothe
these worries held quiet in every heart
that was once mine. A sprightly cold
slices through the corners of my eyes,
forcing them open, filling them with
tears. The unfamiliar has come, and at
last I am taught what it means to stay.
The first sign of the end was the day
you didn’t get out of bed to smoke a cigarette.
The vessels that infused your identity slowly
took your life. Even when the doctors told us,
“End-stage COPD,” I thought we still had
more time for whistled wind and mischief.
You were supposed to live forever.
I envisioned you outlasting the end
of the world with your wit and sly smile.
The family historian, the orator of ghost stories,
the one singing the loudest on our birthdays.
What is dead space if not diffusion denied?
With no place to go, your lucid thoughts were trapped
inside your barrel chest until your last breath.
Puff, puff, puff—until the air no longer left your lungs.
a photo snapped in haste
as a reminder
for me to pay for parking
the only record
of a meal where my phone
barely left my pocket
where steam
from piping hot bowls of noodles
wafted up and around our faces
and hung in the restaurant air
heavy and comforting
if I had been ticketed
I might have pled my case
showing this photo as proof
that I meant to pay
but got lost in conversation
sitting around the table with classmates
who have become the best of friends
who I’ve dissected bodies with
fell asleep in lecture with
and stressed over exams with
friends with whom it is easy
to lose track of time with
Front door never guarded
Savory aroma fills the room
Water boils, guess she started
Well, we did say we'd be there soon
Mind the stove while she gets ready
Turn the spoon, but not how she asked
The expert takes over, hands steady
Shows a mastery of her craft
Boils over when she looks away
The least I can do is give a taste
I'm not the chef, but I won't stray
I could stand to learn from her haste
Through the years, she would tire
Grateful for the more I'd give
The help was never really required
Serving was the way she'd live
After years of helping to no avail
I come to realize there was no risk
Those times where all I did was fail
Were the ones I really missed.
I prefer walking to driving but
I’ve recently become the type of person that whisks by the sidewalk instead of standing on it.
and every morning I take the same route to school and on my drive home, I take one of
two different routes despite there technically being an
infinite number of paths I could travel on to reach the same destination.
I can’t help it, I like left turns with green arrows and rights with no reds.
A few weeks ago, I took my less favored route on the way back and I noticed
this small rectangular object
sitting on the road, slightly to the right.
I shifted, so that my car wouldn’t crush it and I couldn’t help thinking about how
devastated I would be if that object sitting there was
a pair of sunglasses or some other small item I once owned and somehow lost.
but of course I forgot about it by the time I got home.
This week, I took the same less favored path out of
a desire to avoid traffic, and when I made the same turn onto the same street I noticed the object,
still there, same placement,
haunting the road beneath the afternoon sun and I wondered how long it would be before
I came back and it was gone.
I then considered the question as to whether or not
I would have retrieved it if I was a pedestrian and not a driver, if I was a guest of the road and
not its source of disturbance.
but touching unknown objects is not exactly in my nature and then there’s the consideration of the
cars speeding by.
would I even be able to consider picking it up at all? would there be any time?
I’m not sure.
I wonder what it would be like to be someone else,
the type of person who drives on the road without worrying about the possibility of having to take
an unknown route home,
or the kind who sees an object on the road and simply drives by, or comes back two weeks later and
doesn’t remember seeing it the first time.
but I'm not.
I’m the kind that remembers, despite the fact that I can’t fix it,
and time will keep passing by anyway.
I stared down at you, in your white shroud
and I, in my stiff blue cloud.
I held your hand when they twisted your arm
and watched your fingers twitch
as we pulled your tendons like marionette
strings
You let me break your ribs and invited me to
cradle your
Heart.
Here, you said, take the gift I have given
you.
In the blur of rounds and restless halls, faces flicker like flames—
A flurry of charts, scans, alarms and calls, a thousand needs, a hundred names.
And then—
between the beeps, sutures, questions with lingering answers,
a voice, quiet but certain, said your name.
Not doctor, not nurse, not miss,
but the syllables that are wholly mine, finding my reflection
My place
In an unexpected shard of glass Being assembled back together
It costs them breath, it costs them pain, yet they give it as if it were gold—
a hidden gem in a weary day
that shines brighter the more it’s told.
In blooming spring
She runs
giggly and sweet
Through a valley verdant not Hers to keep
She prances
Picks precious petunias
Tramples trembling tansies underfeet but Scorns the slugs that shelter under a fallen leaf
She salts
and salts
andsalts
until their shriveled husks shrink under
Her shining gaze
Her sporting done,
She slumbers replete
While grieving garden
weeps
“One, two, three” —
the butterfly whisper of a promise,
faintly fluttering, pressing against
a burning chest, a gasping breath
Eyes sparkling with saltwater
fear and hope and the bittersweet
aftertaste of dissolved
Midazolam
A sea of cords and an unfinished puzzle
blue and yellow edges sleep beneath
restless fingers,
surrendering —
stained with tears and scented markers
A ghost of a pulse,
And I reach for her
before she reaches for me,
humming the enjambments of
a half-forgotten nursery rhyme,
a desperate plea
Through the IV it transmits —
Just one pause —
one, two —
and she echoes back the notes
octaves higher
The whole unit fluoresces.
A portrait of a mermaid,
conjured between infusions,
curls by the bedside,
still swimming in her eyes
depths greater than I ever dared
That was when I realized
courage gleamed most clearly
in the form of a mermaid,
in the tiniest hands,
And after “one, two, three."
