for Deb

Portal is a video game
where you wield a gun that shoots 
holes. One you go into, one you come
out of, each end delicately placed on the wall,
facing one another in Escherian drama.
In this portal, Mommy is a robot,
and the robot puts you through hell. But let's
not talk tech. In life, disparate points
may also be connected. See: leading group fitness
classes back when my body could
hold my bottomless desire for pain; and ten
years later, seated on the floor of a “dungeon”
in a nondescript New Jersey Holiday Inn,
wrapped in the arms of the woman who’s
just lavished bruises upon my ass and thighs.
But Nat, you're burying the lede.
This poem is really about “Dark Horse,” Katy
Perry’s 2013 “witchy and dark” pop hit, the video
where she, uh . . . pretends to be Egyptian?
Yeah, that song. The one to which I pushed eager
bodies into cardio panic long ago.
It was an up-tempo remix, to be clear on this.
When I taught that track, I thought I would die. 
Not dying was my fantasy of resistance: in
discipline, I'd avoid coming to harm.
And yet—long since harmed—it’s 2025 and I hear 
“Dark Horse” in the dungeon, where someone's getting 
fucked near a portable speaker. It's the 
slower radio version, but the song is the same: 
near-blackout gasping, ankles shot, shorts damp 
with piss from tuck jumps, alive in the hell
I once gave myself. And now I’m living in delicious
hell gifted to me by someone else. 
This is not a game: I want
you to hurt me. Tell me I'm good, yes, 
a good little boy—no robot. Let me be abased by
longing. And when “Dark Horse” plays again, take me
back through the hole. Be the one 
who makes me feel it.

The Ninety-Two Dollar Snail

for Brigitte

Standing in a gift shop you tell me the cost
of the snail in U.S. dollars instead 
of Canadian, arguing it’s less than initially supposed.
The purchase may be worth it—and yet
this all feels like too much
desire. When I say that, what do you see?
Maybe the Nova Scotian 
cafe we dined in days before, where I did agree 
to buy a grab bag of “treasure” and unpack 
its broken contents. The reveal: a chipped mug 
holding rainwater bracing 
as the maritime air 
       I thought at first too cold
too cold to feel is how I’ve felt for so long, after all
I thought I’d forever be an icy geometry 
who releases light refracted ’til it hides its hungry
source in clever ways.
Yet on this northern soil, studied designs
demand we cut up the rules of previous prototypes,
collage out something else: sunrise over
Prince Edward Island, puddles following
       a brief storm. And muses:
one who wears the perfect feather earrings. Another 
bearing throttled passion whose tunes I recognize. 
If I had to describe it, I’d say my life’s been
a solo journaling game where I struggle to record
hurt before its bittersweet splendor is sacrificed 
on the altar of new distractions—
in this case, a felted snail who undermines all rationality
by being too sweet, too 
soft, and though I’ve desired 
such transport before, this is the first time you
have stood by my side in view of the object in question
saying yes
there is a cost and I appreciate that it’s high
but also I understand why 
you want this and I think
              		   you can have it. You 
   		      		         can have it.

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Tell me a story, he said. A happy one. Your stories are always so sad. 

It’s what I’m good at. Besides, it’s hard to write a happy story, I said. But I’ll try. What kind of story?

One with fairies, he said, after thinking for a moment. The kind with wings. I already know too many stories about the other kind.

We were in bed, with only our toes touching. We weren’t looking at each other but instead were gazing out the window overlooking the front yard. We had argued earlier and weren’t really mad anymore, but we were still trying to figure out how to make up. 

The fight had started when his sister asked him to take his mother to the doctor, even though his sister doesn’t work and has plenty of free time. I had merely said he shouldn’t always be so willing to help, because he got taken advantage of. I don’t know why we were fighting, but for some reason I thought it was important to get him to admit he couldn’t stop doing it, even though I liked that he was always so giving. And he felt it was important to insist he could always refuse to help if he wanted, even though he never would. Such is the stupid way that even people who love each other communicate sometimes.

Do you know about the martini fairy? I asked.

That sounds more like that other kind of fairy, he said.

The martini fairy is a wonderful fairy. He’s the wittiest fairy. The most charming. Often in a tuxedo or white dinner jacket. He lives in our front garden, between the dogwood and the pink azalea, beneath that floppy lavender. He likes to lean against a mushroom, smoking a blade of grass, chatting with the gin-and-tonic fairy and the Manhattan fairy. And his nights with the champagne fairy are always special, but he thinks the pinot noir fairy is pretentious. He is suspicious of the white burgundy fairy and barely tolerates the beer fairy. And he loves staying up until dawn, swinging in a hammock made of spiderwebs, listening to the whiskey fairy unwind tales of lost love and forgotten empires. 

Sounds like a lot of lushes in fairyland, he said.

Don’t interrupt. One night he was drinking a Pelligrino and looking sad and the Limoncello fairy, the most sensitive of all the fairies, asked what was wrong. And the martini fairy said they had run out of olives. They only had lemon twists and pearl onions. So the other fairies fanned out to search for olives in trash cans and dumpsters but all they found were black and kalamata olives, which clearly wouldn’t do. Some fairies tried to sneak into a pixies’ bar, but pixies are fairy-phobic and refused to share their olives. 

He turned towards me now with a look of concern.

The Limoncello fairy came over and gave the martini fairy a hug. The Vermouth fairy, who understood the martini fairy in ways that no one else could, offered words of consolation, but the martini fairy would not be consoled. He felt suddenly incomplete. And, in truth, his white dinner jacket had started to wrinkle and the air of sophistication that always clung to him was beginning to evaporate.

I stopped there and looked out the window.  

That’s as far as I got, I said. His foot moved away from mine.

That’s not a happy story, he said. The martini fairy needs his olives.

Unfortunately there aren’t any and all the fairy liquor stores are closed, I said. The only way to make it a happy story is for someone to get the martini fairy some olives.

You’re only stopping there to prove a point, he said. I shrugged. 

He looked at me, clearly irritated, and shook his head.

You suck, he said. I shrugged again.

He pulled the blankets off and got up, leaving a small indentation in the mattress. I heard the refrigerator in the kitchen downstairs open and close. Then I looked out the window to see him walking barefoot across the damp grass, shivering in his boxer shorts and ragged t-shirt, holding a toothpick with three green olives speared on it. He squatted and slipped the toothpick gently underneath the lavender. 

It’s a happy story now, he said, when he came upstairs.

Because of you, I said.

The post True Love With Three Olives and a Twist appeared first on Electric Literature.

I was there in the cheap seats when the man with Boston 
on his back tackled the giant bug. A shaded skyline that enfolded 
 
his shoulders, revealed when he frenzied his shirt over his head 
after Nathan Horton scored in the second—the Ontarian 
 
dispatching the puck so absolutely the net was compelled 
to take it in. As if to make something belong, you hack hard as you can. 
 
From the terrace level I cheered too—not for the goal but to make 
myself known. Displaced New Englanders never stop needing 

to tell you where they’re from. The bug was from Tampa—a woman 
named Kelly in a 10-foot foam exoskeleton who silly-stringed a man 
 
when his team was down and away from home. So fervent for a city 
he needled it under his skin. As security walked him out, he spiked 
 
a finger in her face—not Kelly’s but the bug’s, with the unwatching 
eyes—and snarled as the crowd cheered his ejection. Hockey 
 
gets violent. Players brawl. The refs allow it, the us-and-them-ing, 
and we take it for camaraderie: the refs, and the fans, and even me, 
 
indifferent to the game but not the need. Even Kelly, though it cost her 
the job. Now she lives in Chicago, custom-crafting mascot costumes 

designed to ride light on one's frame, and all machine washable.
Horton eventually got traded to Toronto, never leaving
 
the injured list, but I hope Canada consoled him. The Bruins took 
their loss and headed north, same as we would later that year, 

in a U-Haul heavy with everything. The tattooed man lives forever 
in a video online. In my memory, I’m right across the aisle, close enough 

to hear him scream Stanley Cup into the bug’s meshed mouth. 
But I’ve watched the clip a dozen times and I’m nowhere to be found.

Self-Portrait with Vermont Forge’s Heirloom Weeder

that I bought online one night, unable to sleep
and again intent on wresting order 
from the mess. On uprooting 
clover—even the four-leaf. I don’t believe 

in luck, maybe because I’ve mostly had it. I do 
believe in knuckling down. 
Yesterday, I potted the sprouted pit of a stone 
fruit I pulled from the compost. 

I’ll overwinter it in the basement 
where I can fret about its chances every time
I run on the treadmill. 
Exercise is supposed to be good for sleep. 

And lavender, though I cut mine back 
too hard and it’s not pulling 
through. I wish the garden gave me more
time to make good. Five months if I’m lucky—

not that luck exists. Episcopalians 
have prayers for the Natural Order, 
praising the God who fills all living things 
with plenteousness 

and I consider my plenty and if I’d make a good
Episcopalian and what else might be available
at Vermont Forge, 
what other instruments they make 

that could help me. Because in order
to endure, clover can’t be anything
but persistent—
like the faithful, reciting the words of St. Francis, 

who is said to have left his garden
wild at the edges and who begged of his God: 
Make me an instrument 
of peace.

The post The Fragile Pride of the Displaced New Englander appeared first on Electric Literature.

She is the hairiest girl in North America. This is why he sold all his belongings, hitched five rides on five different vehicles with wheels, and arrived at her doorstep with a speech so polished she couldn’t think of a way to say no. She cleared out the corner of her closet that usually housed her striped scarf collection—a perfectly sized nook for the curled-up body of a full-grown man and his loom. He sleeps there, during the few hours of night when she is stillest, but mostly he stands beside her, his fingers poised for collection. 

In the morning, she rolls out of bed like a tumbleweed. She crouches in front of her floor-length mirror. He crouches behind her. She sprays down all the hair on her body, then begins to lay it back into place. He opens the front pocket of his button-up coat, which he fills with the hairs that fall as she grooms herself. She uses a brush—the kind for horses—to perfect the aerodynamic look that she has been told “suits her figure well.” When she is done, he scrapes and bends the brush until a flat pancake of hair drops onto his lap. Excited, he adds it to his pocket. 

At the coffee shop, he sucks the foam rosetta off the top of her latte. She doesn’t like the texture. He loves the art. She swallows one strand of hair. It curls around her tonsil. Before she can cough it up, he reaches two elegant fingers down her throat, extracts it, shakes off the wetness, and adds it to his pocket. 

All day at work and on the bus and between being at work and being on the bus, she plays with her hair. She stretches and twirls the curls growing from her scalp. Scratches at the fuzz on her kneecaps. Twists the strands hanging from her armpit. All day at her work and on the bus and between her being at work and being on the bus, he catches and collects and then arranges the hairs in his pockets. Long hairs for the inseam, thick ones for the waistband, fine for the hem. 

In the evening, after she showers, he slips his fingers down the drain to dislodge a clump of hair left behind. He has a tool to reach where his fingers cannot, and he operates it deftly, maneuvering it down the pipe, then activating its pincers. The drain belches then swallows the water formerly trapped by the clump. He meticulously rinses the soap from every strand, before sorting them into the piles next to his loom. 

She brushes and blow-dries. He catches. She settles into bed. He collects the hairs that drift into the air as she tosses and turns. When her body finally gives into sleep, he retires to his nook, and takes inventory. Before he rests, he glances up at all the skirts hanging above him. A constellation of inspiration. 

They continue like this for months. 

Three weeks after he has left her and one day after Easter, she walks to CVS for discounted candy. As she is choosing between peanut butter bunnies and marshmallow eggs, she glances down and sees it. She smiles knowingly and repeats to herself the first words he ever spoke to her: “I am going to be the first man to wear a hair skirt on the cover of Vogue, and I need your help.”

Stem of Thorns

At fourteen, my body grew its disagreement from the inside out. When I had finally convinced myself it wouldn’t happen, a stem of thorns lurched from my belly, shivered when it felt the cool air settle around it, then curled its long arm down my leg and rooted there. My father shrieked and wailed and blamed himself and kicked me out of the house. It’s not because I don’t love you, it’s just that, well, you know, your younger siblings . . . he broke off and got real quiet. Then caved: Steve said it could be contagious. Steve was just a man. He was not an expert. 

On Facebook, I found three others, and we all moved into an apartment together. The apartment had big windows that made the whole place smell like warmth. I got a job as a figure model for an artist who sold her drawings to people who were fascinated by my unique look. She made lots of money. I made just enough to pay rent. With the help of my roommates, I learned how to prune myself and photosynthesize and ignore my father’s phone calls. By spring, all of my limbs were in bloom. 

On Sundays, when most of the world took the day off to pray or pretend to pray or watch their children play baseball, we gathered. In what we called The Garden, for obvious reasons, we picked and squished each other’s aphids and exchanged pollen and gossiped about our bosses. 

Most often, we were left alone in The Garden. We had one place, and they had all the others. 

But one week, as I was bending toward the sun, I heard footsteps, then silence, then the sound of air being sucked and compressed through a pair of nostrils. You smell so . . . floral. The torso of the woman behind me was hinged at a ninety-degree angle from the hips, her nose stationed at the entrance of one of my buds, inhibiting my epinasty.

She didn’t say hello. 

I turned to face her, and the wind blew her hair toward me. She smelled like wet denim. I just love the look of it, like, see, she ran her hand down her arm’s smooth skin-casing, We’re so much less interesting. I half nodded, half shook my head, unsure how to respond or otherwise react. She took it as a sign to keep talking. Oh, my mother would just hate you. She opened her fists toward me and then scrunched them back shut, like one would do to make a baby giggle. I let out an uncomfortable grunt-laugh. She’s always going on about your smell and how much of an intrusion it is. She claims it gives her headaches, says that’s the first step to . . . catching it. 

Certain her mother had never been close enough for a smell-induced headache, I made a face that said, That’s crazy, that must be really hard for you, which was the response she wanted. 

She plucked a flower from my arm and tucked it into her hair. 

The flower died by the time she got home, or fell on the way, but the story of her day of experimentation lasted her for years.

The post Hairballs Are My Love Language appeared first on Electric Literature.

The man who’s called me out to pick his lock is lying. He doesn’t live there. I know this, because it’s my apartment.

When I received the message, my first reaction was shock. Not a stomach-churning kind of shock—like when Sarah decided to up and leave after ten years of marriage and told me with nothing but a text—but more a feeling of surprise. That of everyone in this damn city they could steal from, they’d choose me.

I thought about calling the police, but left the number undialed. I guess a part of me was curious. Everything’s already so fucked, I wanted to prod it a bit more just to see what would happen. So now I’m on my way to help a man break into my own home.

When I arrive, he’s sitting on the worn corridor carpet, staring at the ceiling. He’s in his late twenties, wearing tight jeans, a baggy tee featuring a band I’ve never heard of, and an old beanie. He’s a little jittery—understandable, given that he’s about to commit a felony—but all things considered he’s holding it together. It’s a look not so different from that of most of my customers. I used to enjoy watching their concern melt into relief whenever I teased their door open. I’d smile as they stepped over the threshold, arms outstretched as though hugging an old friend. That’s how I used to feel getting home, too. These days, I shuffle Metropolis-like through my front door, past wedding photos, past the jacket that Sarah used to say suited me, past the boomerang from our trip to Australia that we swore we’d learn how to throw. Everything’s preserved, like Pompeii after Vesuvius erupted—except in this case it was Sarah blowing up my life.

The man flashes a fake ID bearing my name. “I appreciate you coming out so quickly,” he says with as much confidence as he can muster.

I stare at him for a moment, pondering my next move. Confronting him’s still an option, of course. There’s no room in those drainpipe jeans of his for a weapon, and I’m sure a combination of old man strength and primal rage would see me through. But the same morbid curiosity that brought me here keeps dragging me along for the ride.

So instead, I sit there, picking the lock with the quiet professionalism I’d give any other customer. After a few minutes, the door springs open.

I wait in the van as he loads his car with my shit: the widescreen TV Sarah and I used to snuggle up in front of; the record player she bought me for my thirtieth; the food processor that’s been collecting dust for a year.

As the man drives away into the night, I step inside. Everything’s gone: not just the expensive stuff, but the small things too. Liquor, coasters, even the damn boomerang. And for the first time in forever, I can breathe a little more easily.

The post Nothing Says Closure Like Being Robbed appeared first on Electric Literature.

You catch your reflection and think: What the fuck? Is that a new bone?

You’d liked it when you were younger—flaunted it, even—the prominent collarbone of a thinner woman. Then came your mother’s fugue summer, when amid all the worry and perplexity and frantic travel, your pulse became visible at the base of your throat.

Maybe something, the doctor said, maybe just underlying structures uncommonly close to the surface. You hadn’t thought of it that way before, but they were, weren’t they? All that visible rigging. Was it grisly? Did it make people squeamish? It struck you as unseemly, indecent, something meant to be private and internal out there for all to see. You became self-conscious. You began to amass a collection of high-necked tops. You began scrutinizing the necks and shoulders of other women during warm months, in exercise classes, in red carpet photos of actresses in strapless gowns. You were trying to understand what’s normal, where you fall in relation.

Next was the emergence of the outer tips of your clavicle and knobs that must be the heads of your humeri. You suspected bone spurs, then looked up “bone spurs” and decided, probably not. No one has been able to explain it. Perhaps it’s premature aging, or another scoliotic disfiguration, a byproduct of your terminally terrible posture, something that might have been stopped had you noticed and course corrected in time. Which is to say: your fault.

It’s hard to know when more tendons in your neck and more mystery bones in your chest and shoulders have emerged, and when you’re just looking too closely, obsessing, growing more and more paranoid. It puts you in mind of that French show where a lake drained to slowly reveal a sunken town.

You imagine being able to wrap your fingers all the way around your clavicle. You imagine rainwater collecting in the hollows, hummingbirds alighting to bathe there. Ha, startle reflex like yours, you’d like to see them try. (A jest! Dear Universe, please do not send birds.)

At night while drifting off to sleep, you begin to observe stirrings. Lying on your belly, arm folded under your chest, you feel a delicate tickle against your palm. You flick on the light, rush to the mirror, and pull aside the collar of your T, but see nothing. This occurs several times before you finally catch a glimpse: something squirming underneath, like your galloping pulse did, but freer, more erratic.

It remains dormant during the day but grows bold at night. Stand still long enough before the mirror and you’ll see tiny bulges probing your skin from inside. You imagine hundreds of feathery legs, like a millipede. You poke your collarbone and it dives away in the other direction, testing the outer limits of your body, or further within, becoming, for once, discreet.

It wants, you think, to be free. Don’t we all. 

To entrap that which would be rid of you, to ensnarl, to imprison, is ethically indefensible, it is morally repugnant. So you go to the kitchen, open the drawer. Your hand hovers: carving knife, paring knife, boning knife. The last of these sounds most appropriate, but you quail before the sharp edge and settle instead for a butter knife. 

What will you become without it? Compressible, you suppose. The way rats can squeeze down their ribs for any point of ingress and octopuses can ooze through any hole not smaller than their eye. This could be the start of a whole new chapter of your life, one featuring cave exploration, wreck diving, and other claustrophobic pursuits.

Before the bathroom mirror, you wedge the butter knife behind your clavicle and begin to pry. At first, it bows and writhes in distress, but you pause to pet it, humming lullabies, and it calms enough to proceed. This hurts more than anticipated. The shaking hands and sobs aren’t helping. Nor is the blood, obscuring everything, making it slick and difficult to gain purchase. No longer able to make out much in the mirror, you might as well stumble into the bathtub, finish this curled up against cool porcelain. 

Twang twang twang snap the tendons. Through the carnage slices something thin, pliable, and coated in gore. A wing! Of course, why didn’t you see it before: it wants to fly. You drop the knife, try to relax, just be open and unresisting. Your part here is done; like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, this struggle may be crucial to its becoming.

It surges, twists. You wonder how much will go, whether just the clavicle or a larger mess of tendon and bone is about to claw free of you. It is so close now.

You try to skip ahead to when the horror will be over, the pain. Not so far in the future, it’s scaling the wall, smearing the white with blood and gristle. You’re tempting it down with a bowl of milk, or sugar water, or raw liver, gently dislodging it from the crown molding with a broom. Assuming you still have control over your arms. Assuming you come out of this as more than abandoned meat, a lonely shell, hollowed and bereft. Be generous, you tell yourself. Be easy and selfless and kind. But when it looses a victorious, breastbone-rattling screech, recognition: this is more than you are willing to give away. 

So you clamp your hands over it and cry, “Don’t leave me, don’t go!” You feel it fighting, as desperate to get away as you are to crush it to yourself. It’s a fierce struggle that carries on for several terrifying, heartbreaking minutes. At last, over your pants of “please, please, please,” you feel it subside, go still once more, and surrender under your bloody, trembling hands.

The post My Skeleton Thinks It’s Better Off Alone appeared first on Electric Literature.

Click to enlarge and scroll

Chinese-American

Click to enlarge

It Is Faster to Get to No Than Yes

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The post I May Be a Snake But I’ll Never Become Your Purse appeared first on Electric Literature.

The doctor cut something out of my head, but I still couldn’t figure out how to live. Maybe that’s why she suggested the spinal tap.

It always happens on the sixth of the month. I lie on my side in a scratchy hospital gown, back exposed, waiting for the zipping sound as Jessica, my nurse, pulls open a sealed pack of tools. “Relax,” she tells me, and I wince when the cold wet tongue of the iodine-lapped brush squeegees down my back, her fingers searching between my vertebrae for a secret keyhole.

The drip-drip of clear cerebrospinal fluid (shortened to CSF in the after-visit summary) comes out like sap tapped from an old maple tree. It takes a little over fifteen minutes to get it all out. The nurse tells me it’s a good color and pressure—cloudy yellow would mean there’s an infection and too fast would mean there was too much pressure in the brain. She pats me twice on the shoulder after it’s done, the way a farmer might pat a milk cow. Atta girl. She can’t remember how to pronounce my name or my current dosage of Prozac, but that doesn’t matter. The labeled tubes on the tray are evidence enough. Right now, I’m perfect. My color is perfect. No one can take that from me.

But I can’t stop thinking about it the whole trip home. A part of me, tucked away into a steel lab case, off to be swabbed, sloshed around, gawked at and then discarded by a stranger. It bothers me. I picture myself as a hawk, breaking through the glass windows and clawing out the eyes of the lab technicians. But what then? 

It takes a few late nights of online snooping for office floor plans and well-timed hovering when Jessica’s typing her password into the system. I find a small cupboard in the staff kitchen near the patient rooms where I can hide. It’s a bit cramped and smells like disinfectant, but it’s empty enough for me to curl my body inside with a keyhole big enough to peer outside. Feigning a trip to the bathroom after my sixth visit, I sneak into the cupboard and wait. People come and go, heating lunches, pulling green smoothies from the fridge, and making instant coffee. My legs and back start to ache, my nostrils filling with every kind of smell. I’m not sure how many hours pass. Eventually my whole body goes numb, but I try to think about other things. About clear pools of water on another planet and the three moons in its blood-red night sky, the feeling of extraterrestrial water on my punctured back, my spinal fluid leaking into the stream. It’s all in your mind. No one’s trying to hurt you. You just need to clear your head, the doctor had said, and she’s right.

Finally, I hear a different kind of shuffling: a saucepan being pulled from a cupboard, the flick of the stovetop lighter. I peer through the keyhole. My nurse, Jessica, in her calf-high boots and summery blouse, brings in a clinking tray. Rows of labeled test tubes like designer salts tagged with their place of origin. She pops open one of them and pours it into the pan. Then another, and another, until the whole tray is filled with empty tubes. She adds a few spoonfuls of granulated sugar and stirs the liquid with a wooden spoon, bringing it to a boil.

The smell of warm caramelized CSF fills in the air. It smells good. I smell good.

After a while, Jessica leaves, and I’m left alone with the sweetened spinal tap, steam rising out of the saucepan. “Are you okay?” I want to ask it, but that’s the thing about any part of the body—once it leaves you, you no longer speak the same language. 

The doctors gather in one of the meeting rooms afterwards. One of the nurses calls over the receptionist because it’s her birthday and who doesn’t feel bad leaving someone out on their birthday? They tell her to shut the door on her way in. She stands near a half-dead potted alocasia near the printer as if trying to camouflage herself. I get it. I’m in the locker now, so they can’t see me. The starched white coats chafe my neck, but I like the sugary smell of the soap. I like observing. I’m good at staying quiet when I’m seeing something I shouldn’t be—I did it for years from my mother’s closet when she thought I wasn’t home.

Jessica puts a small glass bottle on the conference table. It looks like that clear artisanal soy sauce they sell for fifteen dollars at the fancy Japanese supermarket. The receptionist distributes paper cups and pours out small shots of sugared spinal tap for everyone because even if it’s her birthday, she’s good at reading the room.

Kerry (or Dr. Seller as I call her after each lumbar puncture) makes a toast. She says it’s been a tough year, that the election’s been rough for everyone, that the federal cuts may start affecting their research funding, their headcount, but they’re doing vital work, they’re saving lives.

“To life!” she says, raising her cup.

“To life!” the rest of them echo. The receptionist smiles the way she smiles when a patient asks her a question she doesn’t know how to answer—like she’s already blissfully left the room in her head. 

They tap their paper cups to each other, nodding the way you see in old movies when the heroes are about to go to battle. When half of them don’t come back alive. This might be their last drink. They swallow me down in one gulp, eyes closed. I’m sweet and sticky on their lips. I travel down the wet tube of their esophagus, embraced in the dark warmth of their gut. I’ll be a part of them soon. 

It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful, I have to wipe my tears on a white coat.

After the office closes for the day, I finally step out of the locker. The halls are dark and intoxicating with that new furniture smell. Outside, the sun hangs on in the horizon like unpicked fruit, and dusk light powders everything in a shimmering orange sheen. Street vendors fan skewered meats on grills, peeling and slicing succulent fruits, ladling sweetened horchata tea. Everything is alive. My knees wobble; my whole body aches. But I feel good, better than I have in months. I feel alive. 

When I get home, I dream about it. I picture myself in a Midwest forest, naked and still as a tree, a four-inch needle sticking out of my back, a metal bucket set behind my calves, catching the clear drip-off. The sky is on fire, and I am a life-giving god. The forest creatures are my children; they feast on my sweet life blood.

My back itches for days. 

The next time I’m at the oncologist’s office, the receptionist tells me Jessica’s on leave. Something about vandalized lockers and stolen equipment. 

“How awful,” I say. 

She smiles.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

“I’m here for my monthly lumbar puncture.”

She taps something into her computer. 

“We don’t have you scheduled today.” 

“Oh, I must have gotten the dates confused,” I apologize.

She reaches for a clear candy on the dish next to the hand sanitizer. That crystal clear color. I lick my lips and watch her unwrap the plastic. I wait for her to put it into her mouth before letting out a deep, aching sigh.

How does it taste? I want to ask her. How do I taste?

“Are you okay?” she asks, catching me staring. 

I shake my head, apologizing again. She nods and then slides the tray in my direction as if finally understanding. 

“Help yourself.”

As I unwrap one of the translucent jewels, Dr. Seller comes up behind the receptionist. She glances up at me and smiles like she can’t remember my name. That’s okay. It doesn’t bother me anymore. As I drop the candy into my mouth, the sweetness spreads across my tongue, and I think about how a piece of me is inside her forever.

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I look at the cold floor. 
Tap my loafer on top. 
It holds.
I slide to the middle 
and laugh. A horse 
made of fog runs 
out of my face.
The ice is the kind you find 
in Antarctica. We walk back.
Satoru and I take turns standing 
next to the potbelly stove.
I flip through a Sears catalog— 
look for ice skates. I want to slice 
the frozen water. I want to glide 
so fast I become snow.
I want to glide so fast 
I open a portal
to the future.
The war has ended.
I open a portal 
and see dad.
His handcuffs
become a butterfly 
he rests
on his finger.
Wind chills my cheeks.
I look up
and at the door,
a guard. His nightly headcount. 
His eyes, a pair of searchlights 
burning
against our faces.

Our Piano, Missing

It’s in a warehouse.	Lost.

      Guarded by tigers or a moat 

of piranhas. I don’t know.

      We couldn’t lug it to camp.

It weighed as much

      as a small sky. 

At night, I still hear it.

      The sound of a wedding,

a tangerine peeled in glorious heat.

      This country can’t make me 

forget. Every song

      has a memory.

I lay in an army cot

      and smell a tuxedo.

I press an F chord into my thigh.

      Hum the note.

Of Neighbors in Camp

The grown-ups on our block look for their ghost lawnmowers, 

but I’ve known you, Fusae, since before the war

Before I saw your wet hair freeze in January air, stepping out of the shower 

Your mother’s voice sounds like bees through barrack walls

I’m glad you’re here

We sit by the fence under a glint of moonlight, 

bury the last of our baby teeth

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