splashes of monsoon. taste the tepid air.

a nightmare

i woke up chewing glass!

it splintered my tongue wide open

my cheeks are raw and i bleed down my front onto crisp

lines

but i can't help it i am compelled to keep eating the

GLASS!

glass.

a clear wall

my alabaster friend says over and over and over

we have to break through.

they don’t see that they hold the hammer and that i—

my mouth is being held open to catch the pieces so they don't litter the floor.

my limbs are bound behind me and eating is my only option.

not only does it tear my mouth so that my protests fail

jagged broken twisted phrases i never meant but

down

it

goes

tearing into the tunnel of me and

SHARDS

grate against my insides.

the space behind my chest is ripped so anytime i try to speak i just bleed

out

red on yellow blurs into a summer picnic

condiments on a hot dog

it’s my all-American dream and

i can’t eat the proffered item i don’t eat flesh

but i smile politely and

anyway

they have angelic ears, they hear what they want to hear:

my pleas to please listen become

acceptance/ warrant/

"my asian american friend who is basically white is so strong/ is an example/ eats her pain."

i am chewing GLASS.

how do they not see my jaw bloody and broken my throat torn worn open

not just by my own swallowing but their incessant feeding me of

glass?

i am not breaking through. i am chewing a mountain of leftovers:

fed a diet veiled with praise my life to groom me,

i've taken thousands of plastic particles willingly but i didn't know.

they didn't prepare me for the truth that i'd have to clean up for them and explain their destruction masked as celebration

"tear down this wall!"

who built this fucking wall

"it was a broken system!"

it was built broken

so they climb up, my friend, they stand on the roof and they look down and calls for me to join them

“it is so free and clear up here”

but i am bound on the ground and

dying

still cleaning up their mess with my mouth

i am awake now that it has traveled through my bloodstream tearing every artery apart the fire glinting across the full of me

the space between

the words you give:

this is where i see you.

silence is not dis-

quieting.

it is how i hear you.

‘’yes,’ it says with

every pause,

‘know to me you matter.’

you spend no extraneous air

you fill no void with chatter.

there is no void,

only precipice.

no uncertainty lingers between us,

rather—

i watch you roll

the consonants, taste

vowels on your tongue

considering

the weight of each

note before it is sung.

a mirror, your soul,

my soul echoes;

i know where you hear me.

your light glowing leaves

me growing bright:

prompt: new horizon

atmosphere is not a circle but an ellipse,

not a perfect bubble but one angular at the ends:

someone has had to pinch the sides shut so that we do not leak from the middle

so that we do not gush out gas forcing the seams to split open piping hot and rapidly cooling.

gravity would not work that way.

the horizon is a theoretical line.

if i can move it up maybe waves will be stronger but maybe also the center of my bones will hold me down more firmly, grounding me within a tide.

what separates the earth from sky?

in my view today i have only angles and corners where my walls meet my roof, my shelter and my cage.

sometimes i can see a mist outside where i am, where i’ve chosen to be, where i feel adrift

the horizon i want to drive toward is pink golden orange glinting right outside my eye.

a dusty line blurs hazy in the heat

prompt: love song

there was no ambient sound in the air, just the faint hum of summer, a slow molasses drip of a quiet afternoon pouring into a lively evening. neighbors walking past the open window kept a constant stream of city noise in the low background. a thrum of ease, that this was where she was meant to be. when she looked up, he was closer than she remembered; her last conscious capture was of him busy behind the island at the stove.

“hi.” the edge of his mouth crinkled and she let her hand float up to trace the indentation. a recorded history of laughter. he bent down to press a whisper against her cheek and the out breath brushed her ears. there was no pounding in her chest, never a physical sensation of that, but the sizzling in the pan picked up just slightly.

prompt: cautiously optimistic

the smallest strings still connected

slowly snap as the thread unravels on the rope tethering me to the shore of the known.

my boat isn't being pushed or pulled in any direction but it wants to leave the dock

i fell off a bike the other day.

every morning i change my bandages and redress my wounds.

the stinging pain ebbs and flows, and the bruise on my ribs has migrated to my back. i can not predict how i will feel tomorrow and my brain tells me to overcompensate, while also reminding me that the last time i did that i ended up throwing out my hip flexor on the right side. each moment i can only stand up, listen, and trust that i will know what to do when i need to do it.

every single day is a creation.

when you’ve spent the bulk of your years

suspicious,

at war with the world,

it’s hard to break down barriers erected if you didn’t realize there were builders laboring along to begin with.

to begin tearing is a vulnerability.

“re-dok,” a portmanteau, is the Tibetan language reminding us both hope and fear exist;

re-dok is a feeling with two sides. where there is one, there is the other, and this is the root of pain.

“do you think that there is energy trapped in this leg?” my friend is serious, and for once in all the years i have known her, i listen openly. it isn’t coincidence that every time i fall, this is the side i injure. my dominant side. we repeat abusive relationships until we learn how to deal with them. perhaps this is reflective of other trauma in my life i have been willing to endure.

i cut the final piece still hanging on to the dock and the snap i expect does not come.

all fears i had of whiplash and sudden collision confront me with a clarifying non-existence.

my unchaining changes only the arrangement of particles

thin as a cigarette

thin by cigarette

i have never been

heroin chic

heroine of my dreams

me that is not me

the rain is falling in Los Angeles

and the streets are drowning, yet

when the sun breaks through for a moment

— that tyrant —

all hope of relief is quickly swallowed, dry lump,

and any hint of the floods that just were

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