times i think of god:
three years ago, when my dad lost his job he told my sister this was a good thing because she could write this on FAFSA when she applied for university. my sister got a scholarship to our local university and never left home, despite being the smartest person id ever met.
my grandpa fell in his home and my mom flew him back to vietnam with a one-way ticket. i was supposed to see him that winter, before he got a pacemaker put in. i thought about him when i delivered a speech about sorrow, one that was so poor that i fell below average rankings.
when i bought my first concert tickets, they told me they would arrive physically instead of digitally, so they came too late, like a stork and the baby no one wants. my sister bought me replacement digital tickets so we could go together, and i dropped my phone in the pit at the beginning of the set. i thought id never see it again.
i dropped below the top 40 at speech nationals out of 50 contestants, and i lost a piece of myself because i didnt know who i was if my name wasnt on a ranking list determining my identity.
i saw the teal blue waters of bermuda on the sixteenth of october when i was fifteen and i didnt realize that i never lived my life the same ever since. it wasnt until i came home and washed off all the remaining sand off my skin that i remembered my body was corporeal and i wasnt an immaterial observer free from expectation.
i craned my neck over the edge of the porcelain toilet bowl and envisioned myself being small enough to be flushed away into the plumbing system, away from prying eyes and fatty foods.
the girl with the beautiful brown eyes told me i was the prettiest decision she’d ever made and i wondered how anyone could ever believe this was a sin. i told myself that hell would be as warm and soft as her lips felt.
my mom lost her job last year too, and i thought of how my sister filled out FAFSA, how she stayed close to home, how she lost all motivation to write good essays. i pictured my own future of burnout and money worries, because i would never be smart enough to earn any scholarships.
that boy passed me in the cavernous hotel hallways at that model un conference and i convinced myself he truly cared about me every time he met my gaze. that boy would move away from my city and i would clasp my hands together and wish it could go back to normal, that i would go back to the way i used to be before everything happened.
when i was 6, i used to surround myself in piles upon piles of stuffed animals to thwart the demons and deatheaters that were surely hiding in the shadows of my room, or floating in the steam of my hello kitty humidifier that prevented my habitual bloody noses.
i keep my eyes open for a long time at night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about how everything that fills my room is a vestige of what used to be. i dont throw anything out because it all feels sacred, a first-class relic of my former innocence. i speak to myself because i wish i was the only person listening. there is no one that knows every part of me that hasnt been silent.
