Submergence

The way the light shown made air look like underwater

But then the leaves cried—and water can only fall in the air

So we cried beneath the water

Where tears cannot fall

I looked into the sky and saw a formation of clouds that overwhelmed me with a longing as if I used to be a bird

Pull me into existence 

So I can be useful

How to find use in An emptiness

The happy person that I am with you feels like an exoskeleton that has shed off of me, a somewhat translucent foggy frame, and I look at it like a memory as an amorphous pale sack that knows nobody

If I hold you will I feel whole

Memory transmissions

She wrung out the fabric of the universe

To wipe her memory

Of corrupt feelings

And viral strains 

Have you tried running with water in your hands? I can’t hold myself, I’ll slip through

You said you were left

shattered in pieces

but what about the water

dropped in a splash so quick

unseen

and no where near a river or sea

To be filled with emptiness

Emptiness began to feel very filling

I watched the person that I thought I always had swept away from his grasp by rapids of turbid consciousness. I see what’s left is a shell in a drained basin, waiting for its old inhabitant to be brought by a current that may never return.

There is no significance in human life

There is no significance in human life

Death and rebirth is just a displacement of atoms

We never cease existing

Dont be afraid to die

Lose yourself in the universe

Your consciousness will not survive

Korean grandma - the darkness was deafening except the oscillating fan that felt so threatening

You grabbed the chain around my throat

In a fist

In your sleep

So to keep me from drifting away

I learned how to love from my grandma

In rituals—

red licorice and a black and white cookie hiding in Japanese enamel

ham and cheese sandwiches with apple juice from a glass bottle  

playing the Beatles and Frank

Aveeno and biting our toes

vanilla ice cream in a cone

giving change to strangers

and for some reason you told us to rub our finger under our nose when we washed our faces with soap

and you would only ever take baths

you would let us sleep in your bed while you wrote numbers on the pull out couch 

and you wouldn’t say much

and you would fan the sushi rice for hours

sour and speckled with sesame seeds

sitting on the smoothest wooden floor

she only knew how to take baths

I’ve never tasted any ice cream similar

how painful her life must have been

to lose her mom

and have babies with a play boy

who would marry some other girl

why did you hate your daughter?

there is something I don’t understand

it feels severed

Chinese grandma

Tong-pain

Suy-water

Sung sik ma? Sik juk?

4 aspirin 9am 1pm

The opposite of ignorance is not about what you know, but how curious you are

I never spoke with grandma but could feel her devotion to peace

And she could not speak to me except for “thank you lea”

To have nothing but still have gratitude 

I do not want to have anything 

Blankets

3 waiting for 4

To go into black world bombarded constantly with noises falling into you

and falling out

never catching

Please don’t come

I am unreliable in the way life knows death

Her bones like an expandable drying rack

collapsed

perhaps in pieces

a breath before

the shirt hung

rungs protruding

setting the shape of the cloth

drying with wretched stiffness

you don't want that on your body

because your body's stiff enough

immobile bones scattered but somehow set in whole form by organic fabric wrapped around tight reflecting your scattered thoughts as one

the shirt hung

bones protruding

scattered thoughts

dying with wretched stiffness

the breath you woke up with

the shirt hung

clean threads saturated with water

falling down along the weave

Everything is nicer floating in a wavering air

or a shallow depression in dead soggy swamp grass to puddle in

afraid to lay it out in words

everything is nicer floating in a wavering air

They say life is a cycle

We are only a part of the earth to participate in its cycle of energy, like this frog, but we have really taken things too far. They say life is a cycle, but it is not about our birth and death, it is about the earth giving us life and us giving back to the earth.

It is easy to get lost out of the loop when we lose contact with the earth. We get caught in the wrong course, overcrowded and overwhelmed, every individual out for their own personal exponential growth. When we regain contact with the earth, we are able to realize the energy the earth gives us, and recycle it.

We forget that the earth gives us energy and we forget that we share it.

We are only allowed to grow if we grow the earth.