Apr 03
poem 6 comments

Apple skin

I wish for apple skin sunsets for you,
and may the fairies bless you with blueberry stars,
a bruised hue of battered pride and midnight.

Lined with lace, the conjurings of our tastebuds 
and cool sink water on fingertips as I write.

I've never been good at stitching, but I take the tiny
hotel kits and sew red buttons onto my desk
the two extras that came with the new coat Grandma
bought me last Chinese New Years.

My hair is tangled into forget me knots
Was I supposed to remember, or were they?
The flowers are just pretty now, if we both forgot anyway.

Ergo, we fancy ourselves philosophers as the bathtub drains
and consider how we know we're sentient, if knowing is enough.

I can feel the tears on my cheeks, see God
pinching a pipette to drop it hastily on my cheek
while my eyelashes flicked closed for a century, a second.
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Posted: 04.03.21
Feb 28
visual/photos/art 2 comments challenge: A Celebration of Trees!

Sundown Magnolias

Feb 25
poem 0 comments challenge: A Celebration of Trees!

mo(u)rning peaches

Night spills the ink of a day
ground to our bones

rooted in place under our eyelids.

the smell of ink addictive,
and laughing gusts, the best type of cancer?

Love braids peach blossoms into figments of want,
and into mother of pearl arm rests on chairs as old as me.

She weaves sunbeams and morning dew and makes 
sugared zodiac animals that dance in her blood.

Gives them flower language,
but all they see is a tree--

spindly tree branches cynical, leafless
for another 三千年， 你知道嗎？

三生，三世，十里桃花
One with our names etched, the trunk where we spilled wine

and then flung our arms around the goddess' legs
as the children, the wailing, do.

I cut myself on the swiss army knife the other day,
and I have finally learned how to mourn with her.

If I squint hard enough in the evening, 
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Posted: 02.25.21
Feb 14
poem, nonfiction 5 comments challenge: Love

Little love

Her mouth is on my cheek

and I smile hello at her cherubic face, roaming eyes
completely unaware of what kisses mean

but she does it anyway, 
maybe because it reduces me to a grinning fool.

He hugs my legs, and says “hi” without looking up,
A world of giants and toy trucks and eyes that light up
with childish glee and chocolate.

Perhaps I am not so old after all, 
in my sweatshirt sixteen years.

Honesty, honestly, I marvel at how emotions
flicker on their faces without hesitation or second thought.

Goodbyes are more or less the same, but bittersweet;
I can’t tell if I feel older or younger, now.

An endless repeat-after-me of bye and I love you’s
Well trained to be cute and loving, I’ve always thought

But as her face lights up when we laugh, and he screams
I LOVE YOU’s by the door, into the chill night
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Posted: 02.14.21
Feb 06
poem 2 comments

hallowed halos, hollow be thy name

I don’t know if I believe in angels anymore.

I poured Cupid into paper wings and when the origami butterfly didn’t fly, I gathered rainwater from my eyes and tucked heaven’s silence into my ribs. But ire metastasizes, and my blood now cries pearls for the fallen angel, risen cynic, an odd metalloid of child and higher being. 

I metamorphose subconsciously, and the half of me that is my mother’s hair and cheekbones tuck away my soft parts in fear that I will metabolize them and self-destruct, utterly alone. She needn’t have worried. Fly away hairs are cherubs that hold their bowed promises to baby skin, powdered sugar that tastes like superfluous nothing. 

So I will still have my brownie, if only in teenage defiance.
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Posted: 02.06.21
Jan 26
poem 3 comments

Tiers

A collaboration with Yellow Sweater and my brother :)
~~~

“LET THEM EAT CAKE!” 

curse the sweet toothed aristocrats
with the ebb and flow of revolutions,

butterflies on one final sugar high. 

.

but surfers don’t watch waves, they breathe them.

I wonder if frequency is measured in Hertz because 
of the gongs that are smashed when the
universe collapses to the decimal point 

we connect the dots, 
undulating by a trigonometric pendulum:
steel, and steam, and stars.  

in a sterile classroom brimming with
corpses, kids who are dead before they’ve known
how to live.

we dance in painful convection currents--
Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-seven

oh Abel,
the blood of martyrs is sickly sweet. 
like roses, and rosaries, and roadside memorials. 

I wonder how the heat burns out,
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Posted: 01.26.21
Jan 01
opinion, rant 3 comments

Happy new year! :)

Lately, it feels like time has left me behind. A finals week apparently doesn't feel like finals without the exchange of small gifts and warm words between stressed teenagers, and Christmas doesn't feel Christmas-y without the being a tad more than fashionably late to an obligatory family get together at Mà's house where we smile and get presents that will be returned the next week. 

This winter break, like the majority of the year, has been different. Not necessarily good different or bad different but like many things, a healthy mixture of both. I can't hate 2020, and I won't hate 2020. Because, though bitter, quarantine gave me YWP. It gave me a better sense of self, and it gave me many realizations that, though many led to more journeys than actual ends, was more satisfying than anything I had found before.

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Posted: 01.01.21
Dec 15
poem 2 comments

To the Page

I think I forgot how to speak.

I owe a call to the best friend in my phone,
and an ode to the summer walked on a bone.

An "I'm sorry!" to that boy I somewhat liked,
And a 加油！to that brother who's completely wiped.

The page called my name yesterday,
or was it a week ago? I dunno, Someday.

Standing next to inspiration's dusty tomb
from across the neighborhood of my room

a right on Dirty Laundry and another 
on the Unclosed Shutters

oh dear, I forgot how wonderful Window is!
My word, haven't looked through her in ages!

How many similes, metaphors, and lives now
do I owe to her honor, anyhow?

And Sweater, old friend!
Did I truly fling you to this bend?

Ah well, another poem for you 
And you, and you, and why not you too?

Just round the bed,
words scrambling in my head

And by the time I cross the aisle,
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Posted: 12.15.20
Dec 02
poem 0 comments

Leatherbacked

Oct 17
poem 0 comments

Cardboard cookies

Ther's a cardboard cookie on the table 
that tastes like Middle School
it is warm in my stomach as
cold crumbs line clammy calluses
But it still yields to my teeth as I bite
too much stale worries and never enough chocolate
It is the little photobook that is bitter
on my tongue, but tastes of decadent
strands of summer caught on ivy
webs, we call cafeteria tables
A past & a prophesy
of lost melodies folded in lonely books
for the next sixth grader 
who sucked on apple lollipops of drama
mouth puckeringly addictive
and of boys that whispered carelessly in halls
for all to hear of the insurmountable feat of
tricking overpriced vending machines for bags of 

                            air

because part of us knew High School, the Beyond
would be hard of oxygen
So, there's a cardboard cookie on the table
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Posted: 10.17.20

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