melon melts on my lips,

previous courage dying as

juice dries on shaking hands.

how do i feel about you?

the same way i feel about waterfalls,

sensory overload that drowns out my thoughts,

an open dispensary of feelings

that flow and mist

steady, unnerved

a pillar of grace.

the way i feel about you is the summer sky,

deep oranges and blues paint highs and lows that

cut deep into me, run through my veins and flood

my system. your persistence nearly pummels my sense,

your beauty almost undoes me.

the way i am is fluttery dust,

flickers of gold in watery eyes,

glimpses of good behind grey.

the way i am is fickle and far-gone,

and i think i am best when i fly.

after Hylas and the Nymphs

I will return, Hercules. Fear not, this land

holds cellars of nectar & ambrosia— every grove

and valley pulses with the slumbering of the half-

dead. He wrapped my torso, parsed in silk. Said

may the promise of victory rise upon your laurels.

Fare you well, my love. Be swift. Know no evil.

Look not to the nymphs of the river, they wait for men

to stumble upon their glade, then make nests of their flesh.

You know maidens, they like to tease. His eyes like fists.

The forest had a stillness. The leaves, my shifting audience

to a lone man’s soliloquy. The oaks parted. The sun crawled. At the river’s

edge, I felt no divinity, no gods pulled me forward & no mortals held me

back. Only naiads. Come into the water, my love. We raise no harm.

Us mistresses of the sea, bloom pearls during childbirth, wash away into lake-

foam. We know no Olympus. But you, a God, you of men & fire & a furnace

you staking wars of heaven and earth? Stay, here where the lily pads make

silly fancies with the breeze. Here, where the reeds obey only the rubber-sheen

of the dew after a rain. Here, where we were grown, from Gaya’s lips, us

the sinful harmonies before the pipe loses its guiding breath.

The crickets fling their bodies to the shore, there where the grass

is always green, where the zinnias never pale, where the salmon— spawn

always trace the riverbeds home. Now a hand from the surface, rippling the

join of blood. Maybe I know her name. Maybe I was a god because I could

not bear to be a nymph, to be half-mortal. To run with all this price of light.

Every tendon of her body curves into my shadow, till we are one. So this tenderness

is our undoing. So all the flowers in her hair dance upstream. Did the thunder

quiet its own rumbling? I hadn’t quite noticed.

Only the sound of her lips on my full bones.

i’m a golden hour girl, a lover of sour gummies that get stuck in my teeth, a mint eater, a sun bather, a walks-over-runs kind of soul.

i’m a loud cryer, a self-righteous fighter, an agonized writer, an insecure flighty-fidgety-burnt-out-people-pleaser kind of person.

i like sunsets, hot sand, hands-out-of-the-sun-roof radio chants, bedroom slow dances, barefoot dreaming kind of days.

i like being alone with the wind, talking to my very few friends, pretending to be careless and then going home to fix it all up for the next kind of days.

give me a warm greetings, artificial icy sweetness, learning-how-to-drive-with-my-dad mornings, butterflies in my stomach, inchworms on my wrists kind of summer.

leave me harsh goodbyes, poetry that doesn’t rhyme, painted sure-we’ll-hang-out-this-week lies, misuses of the word “vibe,” flimsy mistreatment of valuable lives this summer.

Last night I dreamt I was on a train at eternal golden hour heading to a place I don't know. It was so real I swear I could feel the thrum of machinery when I fell awake. It seemed so lovely when I stood there among blurry faces and dirty sneakers. Maybe that's why it couldn't stay.

Last night I dreamt I was on a train at eternal golden hour heading to a place I don't remember. It was so real I swear I could feel the dripping sun when I fell awake. It seemed so still when I stood there among blank eyes and grimy seats, like flies in amber. Maybe that's why it couldn't start.

Last night I dreamt I was on a train at eternal golden hour heading to a place I don't think exists. It was so wrong, I swear the faceless passengers were taunting me by the time I fell awake. It seemed so terrifying when I stood there among those repressed memories with a name. Maybe that's why I was glad when I blinked awake.

And last night I dreamt I met myself on a train at eternal golden hour, heading to a place I don't want to find. Her face was vivid and out of everyone in that train, she was the only to meet my gaze. My reflection whispered a thought in my ear before passing by, yet when I fell awake the dream dissolved under my tongue. It seemed so lucid, and I wish I knew why.

boyish. boy-ish. thing come alive. the warmth

flaring in the pit of your stomach, it could be

desire, if you wanted. you are a woman, after all,

after all, you are a dove, you are a god, the music,

the tongue in cheek and on cheek, the love

hidden in the wall on a wednesday. so afraid

of becoming something that it already is. afraid

of tenderness: afraid of its flesh peeled back

like an orange, afraid of the bruises underneath

the silk dress. after all, you are the city at night

full of lovers pouring forth from their doorways,

you are the windows flung open as if the moon

was always the only answer. boy not-bird, regrettably.

girl not record-player not spinning too fast to breathe.

and fear, fear, fear, trembling in corners like a jazz band.

tapping their fingers. love incarnate working an office job.

all of us doing something to get by. we’re afraid of something

and we’ve shoved it away: our kindess and hope taking up space

in the air vents. the storm brewing in your hands, it could be

tenderness, low and sweet. this is a promise i am making to you.

this is advice about that monsoon crawling up your wrists.

it could be tenderness, a song, gentle rainfall, yes woman.

I saw a tumblr post saying how it’s a unique kind of torture to Google recipes from your own culture. To measure out ingredients for another family’s family recipe because you never learned yours. And sure, you can ask your aunt to teach you, to write it down, but the writing is a loss in itself because every single woman before you stretching back to the dawn of humanity had known it without ever having to write it down, and you’re the one who broke the chain. And I know it’s not my fault my grandmother died before I was born so she could never teach me, and that my dad grew up in a whitewashed world that made him feel ashamed of his culture - as though he had to bury it, pray that his child’s skin would be more white than brown so that she would never endure the marginalization he felt - and I don’t blame him, not even a little bit, but his prayer worked and my skin is white and how can I be a brown person when I’m white. My cultural clothes feel like a costume, an appropriation, and I have to tell myself over and over that I belong here, I belong here, I belong. And I can see my family’s love for me in their faces, their brown faces, all of their brown faces looking into my white one, trying telling me I belong here, I belong here, I belong. And I’m trying to cook for myself, make flatbread with flour and water and nothing but those two ingredients, and mine’s too thick and it won’t puff up and I can’t shape it in my hands like my aunts do and its lumpy and tearing and it tastes all wrong because it’s white fucking flour and I’m burning my fingers on the pan as I flip the bread with my bare hands because using a spatula would just be another betrayal and my fingers are burnt because I wanted to feel close to my grandmother in this tiny way and I had to use a spatula anyway. I have to learn my own language out of a book because this society shamed by dad into silence. I sweat every time I try to pronounce one of the six words I know because I know I’m pronouncing it wrong, and I shrink when my dad corrects me and I break when the quiet realization hits us both that the alphabet of my native language is foreign in my mouth. I don’t understand the religion inside the book my grandmother prayed with every single day. It feels wrong when I wish to be a part of a culture, this culture, that hurts women, hurts my family, hurt my dad so badly and it feels wrong when I criticize a culture that barely even feels like mine. My dad almost never talks about his parents, and years ago while driving he mentioned the singing, the wailing at my grandmothers’ funeral and I laughed, I LAUGHED, thinking of how strange the wailing-type singing I’d heard at weddings and the like was and I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself more than when I think of that memory. I told a girl at college that I was mixed and she spoke to me excitedly in our shared ancestral language and I stood with my mouth open and she asked “Did you understand what I said?” and I shook my head no and the light in her eyes went away. I was walking at a wedding wearing a beautiful orange outfit, a hand-me-down from my brown family, and I looked in the window and saw my reflection, white feet and hands and neck and face, and I wondered how many times I would have to burn my fingers or memorize recipes or practice my pronunciation over and over again, mouthing the words to myself at night, before I would actually believe that I belonged here.

i. you once split your lip to prove a point

but i can’t remember what it was now.

we are so far from those war-torn creatures

with gunfire for eyes. we are so far from the room

where you burned holes into my body in the low light.

i remember it was so romantic watching the blood run

down your chin, knowing that it could have been mine.

we used to be such loverboys, with our sharp teeth

and dog-bone eyes. we used to sink the knives in

every night, dance to the white noise on the radio,

tear each other apart because we loved the colors.

i could recognize you by your tendons, still.

i could outline your wounds in my sleep.

ii. back when you were dead i turned the world over for you

and i found nothing but dirt, writhing and angry.

all the mysteries i overturned wanted to go home.

they did not want to be miracles. they did not want

to see the oceans. they asked for darkness, mostly.

blue moon. red stars. all the earth hummed your name,

and i wished for it back in my palms. you were out there,

somewhere, where the world was upright. the ground did not

speak to you. the dirt did not writhe. your hands were just hands.

iii. i’d like to think we’re living the dream, now.

the world is so quiet and we are so full. you are sitting

next to me, and we are watching the minutes tick by.

there are too many stars out tonight to count

but we could. we have so much time.

girl in the butterfly wings,

why aren't you flying away from here?

girl in the butterfly wings,

do you ever want to disappear?

the world is broken and hurt,

shadows chasing light out of the sky;

bloodstains cover your pink skirt,

yet i never seem to hear you cry.

is there something i can't see?

how much pain do you bury inside?

you could be gone, even free,

yet you choose to stay, suffer, and die.

perhaps one day i'll fathom

why you accept the world as it is;

you'll teach me mind and atom

to let go, return to states of bliss.

for now, i'll just sit and stare

and admire your spirit from afar;

the way you dance without care,

though your shoes conceal a scar.

girl in the butterfly wings,

why aren't you flying away from here?

girl in the butterfly wings,

do you ever want to disappear?

When I lost the word for beautiful,

I said instead you make me sick

with your wrinkles. I said

there must be a word for this imbalance,

my inability to put form to my sadness.

I searched for synonyms

in streetlights, doctors, little pauses of weather,

punched my sleeping muscles

in an effort to remember—

and slowly the fade came faster.

Sadness. Sad. S—

soundless. A loss of precision,

my alphabet gone longing.

Soon nothing wet my tongue

and I wondered if this was my flood,

just this one layer of blueness, no difference

between shades of sky. A ruin

and then a renaming. To label my misery

as anything but.

How do you say it? I was so griefstruck

that all I could do was speak in scribbles,

whirrs ringing from my throat.

-

When I lost word

I said you make me

I said

there must be a

form to my sadness

I

punched

to remember--

and slowly the fade came

soundless. A loss

longing

nothing

if this was my flood,

just this blueness

between shades of ruin

renaming my misery

as anything

I could do

from my throat

i.

moonlight whispers against your collarbone, all but silent silk sticking to milky-white skin / you feel it, rather than see it / you do not remember how you arrived here. nevertheless, it does not matter: the drumming of waves beyond your ears and between your lips will act as your guide.

your breath catches in your throat, and you almost laugh because / you realize / like breath, what is essential for life is both abundant and precious, until it’s neither. will you risk that to plunge under waves of uncertainty for a glimpse of omniscience?

your eyes flutter under closed lids. / what is hidden hides for a reason / and perhaps this choir of waves crescendoing below deserves privacy. perhaps not. you do not know.

you open your eyes

ii.

well-worn waves dine on the stars with jagged teeth. you think you see something under the scraps of scattered reflection adorning the surface, but perhaps it’s all / abyss /

neptune calls to you with saltwater knives. licking your toes. stinging your knees / red / raw / wrapping frostbitten shadows round your waist. barnacles nip at the soles of your feet like impatient hounds.

you create ripples in the water as you wade further. you think: maybe the ocean is communicating through cryptic metaphors. the water is silent. you receive no answer tonight.

you hold your breath

iii.

there is this unspeakable fear that pulls on your wrists like rusty chains, pulls on your neck like slowly-numbing fingers, / yet / you’ve been taught not to let your knees buckle under the crippling weight of a shivering midnight. and so /

you drop your robe. slithering down your shoulders, fluttering lifeless behind you, carried away by conspiratorial waves. exposing you to a midnight jury, luminescent skin rubbed / red / raw / by icy water. dawn is far from the horizon, so you hope this inky wetness below, this cavern of nothingness, will be your guardian.

you dive