love, read, write

i.

it hurts to hunger,
to think that there lies
more beyond the dirt.
that tired arms can row
large boats into new worlds.

ii.

i told my friend (in tears):
it hurts to dream
and it does, it hurts to
feel the darkness of the world
as i feel my way to the end,
my fingers tracing the folds in the fabric,
not knowing what lies at the hem.

iii.

yet there is no euphoria like wondering
colors which might not exist,
vibrant and enlightening.

iv.

possibility is a mathematical concept,
the idea that what could and couldn’t,
is and isn’t all live in the same, jagged universe.
you and i -- we dive into it.

she stayed for a month before my mother found something online,
but it’s hard to forget even ten years down the line the difference between
its uniform, robotic sweeps and her brush-like swipes on the floor,
little sunsets she painted with her mop.

I had this dream in which there were fruit flies (drosophila melanogaster -- my freshman year biology teacher was so excited when she talked about them that I henceforth remembered the scientific name through all these years) embedded into the skin under my palms, dotted like living chia seeds sprinkled onto my hands, winged blackheads that squirmed and I felt them all, felt each of them wiggling around under my bumpy palms. I had to squeeze each of them out like an overripe pimple and felt the bugs leave my skin with stinging puss. I remember waking up that morning and checking my hands frantically to see if it had transferred into reality.

I don’t know why, but that feeling -- the feeling of uncomfortable squirming under my flesh in such an inevitable, un-ignorable way haunts me constantly. When I feel stressed, my palms tingle slightly as if I can recall the feeling that I haven’t technically felt before -- echoes of the flies’ movement that I felt the morning after the dream. It feels so real, so threatening, so violating. I can bring it up into my head upon command, the erratic buzzing and the pain as I squeeze them out, the way my hands become home to bugs and then craters of stinging, exposed skin after I’ve removed them all, many of them dead because I disembodied them in my strenuous attempt to rid myself of the parasites. Afterwards, my hands look like a sponge with small holes, as if someone took a metal suction straw and sucked out little bits of my palm, dot by dot so that when I make a fist, I can feel my skin fold around the holes, feel the sting of the fresh, sensitive skin five layers deep that met the world’s air months too early.

crouched beside
     the bed staring
at the fringes
     periphery of thought
a prophecy of
     regret, holding a
krispy kreme donut
     two in the morning
shoveling glazed
     carbohydrates in
glorious betrayal that
     nobody sees: i inhale
and swallow,
     squint at the edges
feeling the cold stare
     of the omnipresent.
i sit on the ground
     stomach full of
half-microwaved
     gut-churning
resentment and
     coiled-up stress.

listen:
i will be your first snowfall.
bits of my heart will float to your earth
in moments of fateful gravity,
blessing your world with my far-reaching arms.

the day i come to you i will be a swan of the weather
to cover you with the cold of my wings, drape my feathers
over your shoulders with grace and
deliberation, stitch my silent dreams to the
nape of your neck, my plumage your umbrella.

and when kingdom comes it will be me
who creates it for you in a gradient of blue to white,
warm to night, sharp to soft in the crevices of your body.
i’ll transform your world into a sky-floating palace
of plains and hills of simplistic beauty,
carve you fields of suspended, pure silence
full to the brim of your eyes.

as evening drifts near i’ll hang in the time-dense air
little ornaments of ivory. i’ll tuck into each crystal
lullabies of deer treading through blank slate
silent hand-made forests making
music with the muffled crinkles of their
weight in the snow and you will cry,
and i will blow on your cheeks;
it will be beautiful.

you will feel me shaping peace
into the spaces between your fingers,
splattering stars into the sky until they slip from its loose grasp
to create a gravity-orchestrated symphony of lights -

that will be me;
i’ll be that first snowfall.

no fall was ever truly
yours until the moment i came tearing the clouds apart
in winds full of ice stars,
when i kissed your nose in a burst of cold that you knew:
the world never existed until that moment.
no empire preceded;
no snowfall before me.

when the sun rises
my hands will grab it by
the shoulders, shaking it awake
one more time.

for meals i will feed it the soft breaths
of its children, little green arms that sway
with mother nature’s every sigh.

when it is ready i will carry it through the fields
to show it its worth, gesturing to
the stretching trees, the blushing flowers,
the endless life
which springs forth;

give it crisp water from the rivers to drink
so it remembers to be humble
in times where its power rings too strong,
when mother nature must run to cradle
the little green arms turned yellow with
too much of its gaze.

if the sun feels sorrow, i will
wipe its tears with the handkerchief
of the clouds, soft cotton that leaves
little pieces on the sun even afterwards,
softening the glow of its sparkling sad eyes.

the sun will tire, maybe
complain of its tasks,
perhaps lament its inability to see
the wondrous world of night and its
surreal, starry terrain.

again i will wipe its tears,
this time with a napkin made with
blades of grass once weaved together by
a bored mother nature sitting cross-legged
in a plain of dead flowers
forgetting her duties and playing with the weeds--
a treasure found floating alone in a lonely river.

when the sun contemplates the dangerous idea
of ends and no more beginnings i will
hold its hands and
bring it to a beautiful corner of the earth,
a place which borders reality and
the edges of dreams.

we will sit together
side by side
and i will hide
my burned hands behind my back
(and whisper into your soft,
blazing fire, tasting burnt skin
and sweet pain: “this is
you”) to watch the colors of the sky bloom
from soul-sucking navy blue to a passionate fuchsia
to a distant yellow as we watch you
sink lower into the horizon,
creating breathtaking beauty in your temporary goodbye
and a promise to return tomorrow.

I am a slow learner. I cruise through the world at a speed different than everyone else; while my friends whiz past me in both body and mind, I stagnate. I linger. I mull over ideas and let things settle before I move on.

It would be a lie to say that I am not affected by my comparative slowness to my peers. It feels, very often, as if the world is too fast for me and that I do not belong. Perhaps, in the busy world that we live in today, that is true. Perhaps I am disadvantaged by my speed (or lack thereof). But I must learn to, one day, convince myself that slow is okay. That slow is good. There is nothing wrong with taking an extra week to learn the material. There is nothing wrong with spending more time reading a book. There is nothing wrong with not being able to finish a test.

Capitalism has created a sort of economic Darwinism; he who is fast will make more money and will succeed more quickly. He who is proactive will get more; he who gets a head start will reach monetary success before his peers. And while to some extent these assumptions may hold true, it is certainly not the dominating rule in the game. Firstly, money is not always the most important. We often forget that learning is not just for money, but for the sake of finding out more about the world. In addition, speed is not just the most important. So is patience. So is initiative. Many people lack the speed but have the grit to reach their goals. Speed gives the illusion that your peers will get more done in less time, but in the end, we are all together blind, searching for answers we may never quite reach.

Even the greatest thinkers and the names we see in textbooks, the names that are left behind as legends, have been slow thinkers. It is not the speed of thinking that finds the answers to mysteries in the world; it is more often the quality of thinking. The philosophy that drives the mind. The reason that the person is thinking.

While I may feel inadequate, incompetent, and very unintelligent when I see myself surrounded by peers who solve ten questions in five minutes while I am still on number two, time will tell what is more valuable. We each have different goals. Perhaps for my friend, speed will give her the tools to find a quick job with good pay. But for me, jobs are not enough. I have bigger goals. And these goals do not require fast thinking but slow and deliberate thought processes.

One day, I will look back on my younger self and wish I had not fretted so much about the different qualities that I had. I will tell myself, "Thank God that I was slow. Thank God it took me a long time to do things. If not, I would not have been able to digest and re-digest and re-digest the information I learned to become the person I am today. Even brilliant people can be slow. Pace has nothing to do with intelligence, and intelligence has nothing to do with success. It is the mind that drives the body to its goals, not solely the brain." And someday, I will believe this with all of my heart.