Treblemaker

I write with a knife

It cuts into my heart

Spilling it onto the paper

My emotions

My thoughts

Painted with blood

Once I start

There is no stopping

I bleed

Begging for someone

Every vow cried to the tip of a saber,

Every soul sold to a higher or lower power,

Every road paved to lead others astray,

Is nullified.

Revoked,

My mind is a car

On a highway

Racing

Zooming

Going faster and faster

My mind is a plane

In the air

Full of chatter

Zipping across the sky

My mind is a train

On a track

I learned to swim

When I was young

I learned

Freestyle

Breastroke

And butterfly

Now here I am

Years later

And all I know

Is how to sink

How to drown

How to go deeper

It ended with roses.

I process the funeral in snatches.

Glimpses, even.

I see my family spilling out into the cemetery

Long-lost cousins twice-removed,

Great granduncles,

I am from coffee beans,  

from bitter brews and cracked porcelain mugs.  

I am from the steamed soy eggs,  

the scent that clings to mornings  

like an old, Chinese dwelling.