After Laughs

after laughs

She takes a deep breath in and immediately regrets it because now she doesn’t know what to do with all this excess air. She can feel it taking up space and swirling around behind her ribs. It makes her feel giddy and confused and completely delirious.

So she laughs.

Only it feels more like sobbing.

And once she’s run out of air for laugh-sobbing, she inevitably takes another breath and is forced to start all over again.

She laugh-sobs until the muscles in her stomach tense so hard they hurt, and her fists curl into themselves like black holes.

She uses up all the air until she isn’t breathing at all.

no longer

Our whole lives color coded: clothes and toys. Pinks, blues: our personality defined. We were not given our own ways to find, accepting, brainwashed, that boys will be boys, all full of violence, assaulting noise, and girls will be their perfect pets divine, discreetly bred to be domestic, kind, conditioned to submit, to watch with poise.  

Awaking from our blindness, bit by bit we are uninstalling unjust lessons. Exploring, we inspect and question it, no longer puzzle pieces forcing fit. We wonder if we are just daughters, sons because no longer do we idly sit.

awkward first date

why does this always happen?

long silences filled with quick eye contact and giggles for no reason

like an awkward first date

no one would guess that we’ve known each other for years

little touches

leaning in

hugs that last too long

That One Scarf

There is this one particular scarf that follows me across the city.

You probably know the one, you’ve probably seen it,

as many times as I have. I’ve known it for as long as I can remember.

It is cheaply made from felt, soft but easily frayed,

and patterned with plaid, black and white with red veins, on drab beige.

My dad has one, and I don’t know where he got it, where they all get it from,

but I recognise it like a beacon every time I see it wrapped around the neck of another

person in the subway or on the sidewalk.

The wearers vary immensely— not all of them are middle-aged Italian fathers. I’ve seen it on college students, on old women. People young and old are united by this strip of

cloth that loops them together

through time and space.

My eyes follow the scarf when I see it on the street, and it greets be like an old friend, a

reminder of

where I came from

and

how lucky I am to still be here.

life away

Life changes. Mostly in small amounts that you never really notice. Sometimes bigger things, but things that don’t affect your life personally. Mostly it just seems too far away to matter. Like hearing about an earthquake halfway around the world. Yeah, it’s sad, but you’ll forget about it eventually. You’re allowed to do that. It didn’t happen to you.

And then life changes in a big way. a really big way.

This isn’t the way it works. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.

It seems distant until it happens to you. Then it’s up close and personal.

And you don’t understand why everyone else treats it as a distant problem.

This is huge. Why don’t you care?

The world spins at 1,040 miles per hour but nobody feels a thing.

Distant news.

circle of sky

here, the sky doesn’t go on forever. it stays draped between the trees. it stays just overhead and just out of reach. it’s private and constant. it’s ever-changing and perfectly familiar.

here, the sky is a personal thing. here, the sky is separate from everything else. here, the sky has it’s own place.

it fits in well with my fantasy, this piece of sky, deep purple, dotted acrylic stars peeking out behind lazy watercolor clouds, the moon’s iridescence lighting up the small world around me.

this piece of sky isn’t much

but it’s mine