Long Sleeves.
Always long sleeves.
Even the summer.


Who here gets it?

and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference

Kiyuki Ishida.

Write everyday.
Write everyday no matter what.
Write even at a loss for words.
Write down the sounds.

I make notes of the plane crashes
I've never heard, the brook trout
that never shook pond water
onto the brittle grass when I didn't
catch it, or the thunder cup coil
I keep kneeing trying to give the overcast
over the mountain something to compete
with.

And I'm not sorry.
       I'm not.      I'm not sorry that my
reborn Christian best    friend    has   seen the    light,
and I still scoff when people pray over potatoes.
And I only believe in plastic Polaroid postcards
from last decade timestamped in the white space
with Bic black ink.
I'm not sorry for that.

And truth is, I've never washed this black shirt;
just hung it hoping that moths' would ****
the sweat spots and leave
the fabric.

I clenched the gold cap beneath
my ring finger from the glass green
bottle occupying my lips driving
down the Marsh Creek bridge.
I wanted to relate / to be relatable /
relative to the sedans, and seatbelts
too tight to breathe, passing me.

At the end of the bridge, where there was no chance
of drowning and the road color changed, I parked
in the driveway of a wooden house. Its blinds
were up, shades pulled apart with two hands
like gas station freezer doors, leaving them
vulnerable to the hiss of semi truck tractor
trailer high beams slicing through fifty +
raindrops per second going a few miles shy
of sixty-five, yet the people inside moved so freely.
I  sat Indian-style—a term I learned at four
then learned it to be racist at fourteen—
in their driveway, and ate the gravel
they walked on trying to taste security
because all I'd had in the last few hours
were plates of refried fear.

Fear of audit, of my teeth breaking off,
and of ending up like Eric Garner
when I heard that wailing
Voice of Justice
coming for me in the distance.

Hey look, it's the new English *****

I didn't dare look up
The same words for 2 weeks now
I only just transferred here
And already I had a nickname

I hate it

Eyes stared at me during class
Words exchanged about me
Not the kindest ones either
I was different... an outsider

Why didn't I get a nicer class..?

I was bullied
Alone
No one even referred to me by name
Just because I was from elsewhere and rumours travel fast

I hated my life... everything and everyone.

I was crying in the bathroom after school
Locked the door as tears streamed down my face
My thoughts finally got to me
I started to believe what they said

No no no no no...

I walked out wiping my eyes
No one was at school anymore
Except maybe a few teachers here and there
"Hey..."

I'm shocked... no one was supposed to be here

A boy stands in front of me
Asian, looked exhausted and he wore glasses. He smiles.
I vaguely remember him from class
He sat by the window in the back

No... please don't hurt me...

"Amber right?"
I'm confused. "Yeah... Amber [---]."
"Amber [---]... mind if I tell you something?"
"Not really... what?"

I wipe my eyes and wait for him to speak

"Don't cry alone here.
I know it's rough...
But nothing they say is true.
Besides, I find the British to be awesome."

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

"Um... Thank you..."
"Hey, no prob. It's late... you should get going."
Another smile.
"I'll walk with you if you want."

I feel really warm inside. And before I realise it, I'm smiling too*

"I'd like that."