~ d i a r y ~

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1.21.21

as i get older, i am less and less interested in what makes me unique, and more and more interested in what makes me connected to the rest of the world

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the way my mother sleeps

when my mother sleeps,

she sleeps with her eyes open and a stream of tears

 

i remember as a child, i asked “in your dreams, do you hear english, or chinese?”

“always chinese”, she said

and i stood there, wondering what it meant

for her to live in english, while she dreamed in chinese

 

she made a choice for me:

to leave her world, and to enter this one

for me to dream in english

with my eyes closed

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botox

sometimes you can feel the fleeting youth disperse from your skin

as it loses the elasticity that botox suspends in time

 

you think about how unnerving that looks sometimes

and how any skin left untouched by the hands of human emotion

could ever look that good

 

you think about your old therapist

who’s face was immaculate and unmoving

like a masonry of stone

 

who you’d tell about the memory of

waking up one morning to your father pointing a gun at your mother

as you stood frozen in a neighboring room

 

and she’d respond that she has tears behind her eyes

as the medspa botox does its job

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a face, contorting awkwardly

yearning for familiar formations

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a cartography of skin

outlined in a resentment

of all the years its seen

 

and suddenly, wrinkles don’t sound so bad

 

and suddenly, you never want to be frozen again

 

and suddenly, you want time to move right through you

just like it always has

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4.28.16

i fell for the boy

with the false golden hair

and i will always remember

how it glowed in the sunlight

and i will always forget

how it yellowed in the dark

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