crushing 17

felt it in my feet
the way you looked at me
crushing 17
but the memory was still so sweet. 

a flower swimming in the breeze

i’m infectious
but not poisonous
i am gentle
a flower swimming in the breeze
petals peeling off and landing in someone’s palms
only to start anew

i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know.

Nikki’s Pyre

July is a surrealist prototype of reality. From the moment I wake up, I live my life for someone else — someone who doesn’t even recognize me some days. But that’s okay because this is July and July is not real.

The walls in my grandma’s living room warp. There are pictures of me from when I was three and eight and some years in-between. Happy, silly smiles and bashful, guarded smiles. I push up one picture frame and press my index finger against the wall behind it. Rings of ripples spread outward. My finger falls in. I push my arm through the wall and then my whole body and now I’m walking on the waterfront towards the Verrazano bridge and where did the time go? Who am I now?

I go for several-hour walks in the heat, pass underneath mulberry trees by the highway, linger by arched two-sided stairs and algae-d rocks that smell of sharp salt and putrid waste. The river is scintillating, a thousand-crystal glimmering slope of blue curves, and the sun is a popping yellow gumball; a prickly fog covers the sun and the space beneath the Verrazano bridge, and all of this is beautiful and yet I am still not present. I’m still writing this in my head, documenting my life as it’s happening. I am a balancing act, on the verge of unraveling as I’m putting all my pieces back together. When do I get to be whole? The extremes are far more subdued these days compared to a year ago, but they’re still extremes. I’m still trying to find the middle. I’m still trying to find my presence in the present. 

There is no permanence to my days. Only my body stays, that and the concept of my existence and my very existence itself; otherwise, my mind changes, my reality changes, and so do all of you. Everything is in flux. 

My summer is an evasive firefly; here one second, flickering out of sight the next. I’ve seen a handful of fireflies this summer, but none have let me catch them and then set them free. I was so close to catching two, too. But they slipped out of my grasp just as my fingers clamped down against the base of my palm to hold them in. I think they know something about me. I think something about me has changed. 

A lot has. 

This past week, butterflies started following me. Small white ones with spotted black wings fluttered by, guiding me toward an unknowable future. My butterfly spine is still intact, hidden tight below my human back, waiting for the right moment to open up. Not now, though. But soon (I hope). 

I can’t tell you what is happening because I don’t know. I’m living in a nonsensical life. My life is happening outside of me — and without me. I’ll start doing something, like taking the elevator down, and then thirty seconds later when I come back into my body I am disoriented. Where did I go? How did that happen? I’m existing right now. This is peculiar. Jarring. Is this what everyone else feels like? I’m not disassociating anymore, yet I am doing something akin to that but not that. It’s like I’m learning what it’s like to be in my body by leaving it, letting my body change on its own, then coming back into it and adjusting to the change but how can I adjust to a new body when I’ve been my own body for twenty-six years. That doesn’t make sense to you, does it? I’ll figure this out.

For several days, I had tar-covered hands; my sticky fingers got stuck to hefty garbage bags that were filled to the brim with canned goods and smelly aged papers that had my grandma’s cursive writings littered across them. Handsome garbage men named Michael — with a stolid gait, a reliable smile, and a straight friendliness — reassured me that it was okay to throw these heavy bags down the garbage chute, that I wouldn’t break it. But I still worried that I would. “I don’t want to cause any problems,” I told him. “It’s 20 gauge, don’t worry,” he told me. I didn’t know what that meant but I nodded. He appreciated my concern. His reassurance soothed me. This was a bright spot in my day.

In the laundry room in my grandma’s building, I met a 69-year-old woman named Annie with grey hair styled into a larger-than-life pixie cut; “I’m so happy to see you,” she told me. “You’re beautiful.” 

She unwinded her life story. Her childhood in Taiwan. Washing clothes outside in the cold. Her 33-year-old son. Her numerous (was it 5?) brothers and sisters. Her husband who passed (or did he?). Sadness, death, and sorrow rippled across every thread she laid bare, but she had the sweetest light in her face and voice. I kept pointing it out to her and she kept complimenting me instead. “You’re very beautiful; you’re very sweet.” We were playing on a seesaw of compliments. She was so happy to see me. 

Last week, I took a cab to my grandma’s building. I never got the driver’s name but we talked about kids and having kids. He was 55 and already had two grandchildren. His daughter was born when he was twenty-one. My body shirked at the thought. He asked me if I wanted any kids. I told him no, but it was a wavering no. He was surprised. 

I told him: I’ve been sick my whole life; I don’t want to spend a year being pregnant; I have control issues; I care too much, I’ll lose my mind; people have an idealized version of the kids they’ll have, but it doesn’t mean they’ll get that; it’s too much chance. I am selfish.

Oh! He liked that answer. That’s it! Selfishness. Egoism. Ego. 

As I walked towards my grandma’s building, he remarked that he really enjoyed our conversation. I smiled. Me too, I told him.

This keeps happening. I keep having conversations with people I will never see again. But I have these little bridges, these little pockets of happiness I get to carry with me while everything else falls apart. While everything else is not real. I stick my hands into these pockets every day. They’re the only consistency I have when everything’s in flux. When everything is not real.

There’s something happening behind me. I can’t smell it, I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. There’s something behind me and I wonder if it’s my life happening outside of me. But that can’t be it when my life is also happening in front of me. Either way, my life is still not happening through me. I am still a gap in the in-between. 

My grandma doesn’t remember me some days. But that’s okay because neither do I.

aftertaste

The cold brushstrokes of April’s currents wait to tug me back into a past that I no longer know. Previous April’s rest on top of my tongue like a thin sheen of saltwater, but it’s an aftertaste that’s been fading with each passing day — and in its place is the hint of something new, light, joyous, delicately and complexly sweet. 

I am peeling back all my layers to reveal the thumping sanguine nature of mine that’s always been at the heart of who I am. I am rambunctious! I am deeply excitable! I am a child! I am, I am, I am!

But the goodness, it’s taking its time settling into my bones, and I worry that this may all be too good to be true. I worry that one day I’m going to wake up and find out that this was all a dream, that I entered a new reality I was only ever allowed to get a taste of and not stay a lifetime in.

I wiggle my right ankle out of a potential grasp looking to pull me under the waves again. A part of me wants to be pulled under, with air bubbles floating out of my nose and mouth, eyes fluttering shut, body going limp. I want to be carried into the deep, dark cold ocean and come alive in my previous form.

I used to be a mermaid. My grandma said so herself every time my head popped above the surface: rusalka. You couldn’t get me out of the water, maybe because I felt so free in it. Even when I was nothing but pruned fingers, chattering teeth, and indigo lips, I still wanted to stay. I was constantly diving under, water rushing past my face, thin light lines crackling through the surface, trying to reach me, trying to pull me back up and out, but I didn’t want to go with them. I liked living below the surface where everything was so still, so straightforward. I liked the way the cold water wrapped itself around my body and then plunged into my skin, creating a new layer around me at the edges of my body. It was a shock to my system every time it happened. 

But I can’t go back to who I used to be; she no longer exists. So I rise and the ocean sinks below me; its teardrops slink down my skin, along the curves of my body, and pool in the dips and hollows of my scars. Honeyed hair — straw-like strands salted by the sea — flattens against my neck. 

I leave footprints in the cushiony, beige sand that fade as the waves slink over them — memories of me disappearing as I go. It’s much like my pasts that I keep revisiting and erasing. I am no longer bound to what used to be. It no longer exists. 

I’ve always been a wobbly question mark for people when I wish I had been a definitive period. But now, I imagine, I’m becoming something more perceptible, more indomitably integrated, to those around me — because inside of me I am becoming more me than I have ever been and I think that others can feel that, too. But at the same time, I like being unknowable. I like floating in no man’s land like a shapeless shapeshifter, giving away pieces of me that evaporate before those pieces can even have a chance to dissolve into people’s bodies. The more people think they know me, the more I don’t want them to. Because just when I think I know me, I don’t — and I don’t want anyone else to have the upper hand on me.

I shake my body like a wet dog, sending all my water onto the sand, staining it. I turn to look at the shore. The waves are so small, so modest in the way they kiss the sand before retreating as if they don’t want to disturb the sand, or let on how much they love her. But they love her, so much so, really. A tiny peck and another tiny peck and another tiny peck and nothing more. You’re telling me that’s not love? (I cannot show all of my love because what if it scares him away?) (What if it doesn’t?)

There’s a hunger stored in my shoulders for the fifteen-foot-tall waves of the past. When I was a little girl, I used to come to the beach with my family, and on particularly stormy days, Brighton Beach would see some massive waves, the likes of which I have never seen since those summers in the mid-to-late 2000s. I would forget about everything, leave my family behind on the sand, and run into the water, timing it so that as the wave peaked at the top, like a monstrous beast looking to make its descent and capture its pray in its foamy hands, I would jump into its body and come out on the other side with a big smile on my face, feeling vindicated. Victorious. 

I laugh at these thoughts because old parts of me really do die hard. Or, maybe these aren’t even parts of me but actually me: someone always looking for a brief thrill, a chance to feel even more alive. 

I put on my t-shirt, my skort, and my black cap. I push my head through the racquet case strap and hang my racquet against my back, the bag’s strap crisscrossing my chest. I walk towards the boardwalk where I sit down on a bird poop-covered bench (the mostly clean part of it) and put on my socks and my pink-and-blue tennis sneakers. My clothes cling to my bare body like a second skin, a uniform. I have been given a formidable armor. (I am four years old again and I am going to tennis lessons for the first time.)

Spring with her airy touch is filtering out broken promises, revealing the veracity beneath them. I see everything so much more clearly now, including myself. The memories that used to take up multiple floors in my body have been cleaned out. And while a trace of them still burdens me, I know that in a few months I’ll barely remember them. 

With all this fresh space, I’ve started cultivating a big garden in my body, and within it, a massive flower has started blooming up and out of my mouth (a hot pink pistil with white petals). Its stems have snaked up my face and wrapped themselves around my head several times over. They tighten themselves, tighter and tighter and tighter until my brain starts leaking all my memories down my nostrils. The liquid memories dribble across my lips, down my chin, into my palms, and I can taste the sweetest ones on my tongue, saving those for keeps.  

I walk across the boardwalk to the handball courts near Luna Park. I skip down the ramp and loop around the walkway until I get to the lone wall that lives several feet in front of the men’s bathroom (I’ll end up, accidentally, sending two tennis balls in that direction). There’s a single tennis ball sleeping on the forest-green bench, a nice gesture left behind by a stranger. 

It’s an unusually warm morning. I throw up the ball softly in front of me and hit it against the wall. Smooth. It comes flying back at me and I hit it again. 

I whisper when I play. I look like I’m mumbling incantations, bewitching the ball to go where I need it to go. There’s still so much weight I carry. I’m not as light on my feet as I’d like to be. I can’t chase down balls as well as I used to. But that’s alright. It just means that I have room to grow, to come back into myself better and stronger.

The ball crashes into my strings and rebounds, flying towards the wall again. I need this to go faster, I need this to go faster. Several feet above on the boardwalk, people are watching me, the girl crushing the ball against a wall, faster and faster, at breakneck speed, the loud thud of the ball against the wall, the ___ of the ball against my strings. I am the center of their galaxy for a moment, and I must impress. I must show them I am capable of talent. 

There’s not a lot of aggression in me anymore, but I still have that itch to crush something, to fight something, to crash my fist against the wall (but only in my head). I’m precariously inching back towards my boyish frame, but until I get there, I’m holding all my remaining weight in my fists and in my chest as if I still carry an unfulfilled desire to crush men beneath my body (I know I do). When I was a little girl, I was unbeatable, shattering boy’s hands, arms, and legs without ever touching them. It was one of the few sources of power I had. No surprise then that I don’t want to let it go.

But, I think I’m ready to give up these hypothetical fights. They, too, fade away with each passing day, as does my desire for them. If I’m always looking for a fight then that’s all I’ll get. And I no longer have any interest in revenge, in settling the score. I want to move on. I am moving on. I’ve transformed my rage into laughter. I’ve transformed into something more nimble, sprite-like. I’ve transformed. I am transforming. 

I'm a Stranger in a Wasteland

California is burning through me. I’m a stranger in a wasteland, going everywhere but nowhere in particular, punching holes in the linings of my sneakers, drenching tank tops in Black Opium-scented sweat, melting small slivers of my body off my body and leaving them as keepsakes on the sidewalks. I was here once. I existed. 

The air always hangs low, a centimeter above my body, a mild yet persistent suffocation. Like being wrapped in saran wrap. I lean against the balcony railing, rolling the cigarette back and forth in between my fingers like a mini-skateboard. The orange embers at the end are a brighter, hotter version of tonight’s sky. It’s nearly six p.m. and all the baby blue has dispersed, leaving behind a stretch of smokey, mellow orange. 

There’s a rather intense game of chicken going on below. The water splashes outside the outline of the pool, leaving the grey stone covered in amorphous spots of water and the blue-and-white striped lounge chairs soaking wet. The scent of chlorine swims up my nose and awakens my sleepy body. Mhm. I close my eyes, leaning further against the railing. A supercut of chlorine-coated memories is about to start playing inside of me when I hear a steady two-tap knock at the door. “It’s open!” I shout behind me.

Colin walks in, two cups of coffee in hand, and sets them on the dresser. “I realized that I didn’t ask you if you drink coffee. I just assumed.”

I don’t drink coffee, but every time I go to a new state, I find myself wanting to become a different person. Maybe here I smoke and drink coffee and introduce myself to strangers like Colin.

“I don’t drink coffee, but thank you anyway.”

Or maybe I don’t do those things.

“Sorry,” he blushes, a warm red flush spreading from his cheeks down his neck. He’s about two weeks post-buzzcut and his blond hair has grown in fast. 

He’s beautiful, like most other people in Los Angeles, but what I have found most beautiful about him has been his shyness — and his sincerity. The way he allows silence to permeate a room and makes no attempts to push her away; instead, he lets her take up more and more space if she so wants. Or, the way his fingers will tentatively graze mine, testing the waters, before he wraps his pinky around my pinky — and then he’ll steal a glance to see if I’m feeling how he’s feeling, but by the time I catch it, he’s already looking down at his feet as if he’s been caught red-handed, a smile spreading wide across his face. Or, the way he’ll doodle on napkins when we’re at breakfast and lunch, and when I ask him what he’s drawing he won’t show me, but then a day later I’ll find the napkins tucked inside my shorts pocket or at the bottom of my purse. There’s a boyishness to him, an innocence to him. Like he grew up but his view of the world didn’t. 

“I didn’t know you smoked. You don’t strike me as the type.”

The type. What type am I? Suddenly I want to know what I am inside of his body. Am I a tropical rain shower flowing through his veins or a blistering snowstorm? Does his stomach leap into his chest when I smile or is my smile nothing more than an everyday occurrence to him? Am I the first person he wants to call when something good happens or the last person when something bad happens? What am I to him? Who am I to him?

“I don’t smoke,” I grin.

He’s confused, but a curious smile grows on his face. He’s trying to place me. I like watching people try to figure me out, but especially him. I like watching the real-time Tetris in their eyes. I offer him the cigarette, “But you can have it.”

“Oh, no, I’m good,” he waves his hands in front of him and moves towards me, pulling me into a hug. I burrow my face into his neck. He tells me, “I don’t smoke either,” but the faint trace of smoke trapped in his t-shirt says otherwise. 

I smile. “What a coincidence.”

I Struck Summer Gold.

I struck summer gold.

The countryside is a stretched-out blur behind the glass windows, but when the train doors open I see it all so clearly — and I wish that this was home instead.

Wide-open fields; rolling hills; orange groves; trees that sing to each other; a palette of slightly undersaturated yellows, golds, and greens that leave nothing untouched; a breeze that stays with you long after it’s gone — a warm, tingling breeze that wraps its arms and legs around you and pulls you down with it; a freedom that crawls inside your throat and plants itself there, urging you to disappear from what you know and those who know you. I could be someone here, I could be different here, I could come alive here.

It may be the unfamiliarity of a new place, or maybe the over-familiarity of an old place driving these feelings, but I’m itching to get out. And this might be the place.

Power lines cut through the view. Clouds tattooed gold by the sun hang low; I can almost reach them if I try. 

I’ve always come alive near the mountains, under the sun, by the sea. Back home, I’m regenerative, in constant metamorphosis, killing parts of myself every day in hopes of coming alive. It would be nice to come alive and stay alive for good, even if for a minute.

The wind is howling below the horizon, almost imperceptibly, but I catch her in my palm and nudge her inside my ears. She wobbles at first, needing to adjust to me again (after all, it’s been a while), then starts swimming down my ear canals. She moves further into my body, trying to get to every corner as quickly as possible. Then, she starts vibrating inside of me like a steady drum beat. It’s starting, that feeling, that hunger. 

She tells me, “Move, dance with me, run towards me, let me embrace you, I’ll love you better than they ever could. You’re mine, you’re cut from me, you’re cut from the sun, you’re cut from the moon, you’re all the planets poured into one big body. But you’re mine first so come to me. Be mine the way I’ve always been yours.”

She pulls me like a puppet off the train and towards the field; I’m her personal marionette doll and I don’t mind it one bit. I nearly drop my bags as I get outside the station. in one easy pull, she lifts my hands above my head. She doesn’t care about propriety, she only cares about the rush of being alive. She pulls my right leg outward like a kick and pushes down my torso as if she’s tackling me. She’s disorienting me in the name of exhilaration, euphoria. It’s been a while since I’ve felt either so I say hello.

“Feel it,” she whispers and wraps her hands around my neck. Her fingertips brush against my skin tantalizingly slow, starting in the center of my neck and moving outwards until all I can feel is the lingering remains of where she just was. I plant my feet firmly into the ground for a few final moments of groundedness before she takes over. 

She knows, she remembers. I smile. Someone remembers me. I am someone’s memory. I am permanent to someone. 

“Welcome back,” she says. “I’ve missed you.”

I start running — but not for long before she freezes, rather stops me, in place. 

“Not yet.” she erects an invisible wall in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. “Dance first. Run later.”

So I start dancing again. It’s not pretty. It’s quite rough and uncoordinated. There’s no consistency. It’s awkward. I’m spinning on my feet and stretching and pushing my arms and legs away from my body, pirouetting as best I can which is actually not as bad as it could be. I’m moving my body like rain sliding down the orange trees, moving my body the way the stalks of wheat do when the wind tickles them during golden hour, moving my body like the clouds leisurely rolling across the hills, moving my body like nature does every day. 

My hair is hitting my face, I’m breathless, I’m sweating through my shirt, my toes are digging into my sneakers, but I feel the most me that I have in a while so I cannot stop. I won’t.

Everything in the universe is moving through me. I’m no longer my body but a vessel for the wind, for nature to use as an extension of itself. The separation between my body and the rest of reality has disintegrated. Everything is everything. 

“Now run,” she commands, lovingly, and pulls me towards the hills. I lunge forward, nearly tripping over my feet. 

She’s at my feet, wrapping herself around my ankles. She’s at my neck, blowing my hair away from my face. She’s slinking underneath my shirt, up my stomach, spreading herself across my chest and rushing down my bare arms until she reaches my hands and holds them in her gentle grip. She’s my familiar embrace, the warmest embrace, the not-so-quiet friend of mine I’ve had since I was little.

I’m myself right now. I feel like myself more than I do most days. This is why I can never stay still. I was born to move, to dance, to run, and never stop. I’m running, feet hitting the grass in light thumps as if I’m running on clouds. The sun has enveloped everything in a golden glow. Time is at a standstill. Time is imperceptible. Time doesn’t exist here anymore. 

The train doors close. I blink. I press my palm against the glass. She taps — once, twice, three times — against the glass. I smile at my reflection. She did it again.