every morning i wake up with the same feeling 
the feeling of existential dread 
of being stuck in what is essentially a glorified hell loop 
i wake up with a pang in my stomach 
a mixture of hunger and despair 
i look in the fridge for something to satisfy 
but then i look up and it’s already time ​

[Content warning: smoking]

The smoke quivered in my palm, that sluggish worm of fleeting echoes. Like a scarred hand to the trigger, I grasped the allure of death. But I didn’t want it fast. I liked slow things: roads, weather, gani-boiling, sex, and yes, smokes. “Get that damn thing out your mouth!” Kuraa shouted through the busted screen. I paid her no heed on the porch, drinking what little morsels life had to offer before dripping them out through cracked lips. I wanted to leave. Smoke made doors. 

           Maybe you not yet
     Have eaten. Wake up, wake up,
     Today you lucky to be alive. No,
you much different than me. 
But you once inside me too,
eat my food, drink my blood.

          You know then I no know
what I do with you, evil 
sinner in mommy belly. I don’t know 
what choose, start thinking dead, dead, 
dead until hear your heart boom boom
boom. Then finally I know. ​

“Does she even speak?” the kids nearby whisper to each other thinking that I can’t hear them. Or maybe they want me to hear. To respond and yell right up in their faces. To get offended and run out the door, slamming it on the way out. However, I won’t. I will continue to sit down and stay quiet, pretending I never heard a word. 

This morning is typical. My alarm goes off at six-thirty, doenjang-jjigae for breakfast at six-fifty, and I’m out the door and in my mom’s minivan by seven-fifteen. My mom, who drives me to school every morning, is busy texting her friends on kakaotalk with a big smile. While her fingertips fly across the screen, creating tick noises that fill the car, I wonder how nice it would feel to be appreciated. ​

[content warning: body horror]

I meet my guardian angel at the racetracks, waiting in the betting line with feathered scarlet wings folded as a metaphysical foot taps to an impossible rhythm. He holds a handful of coins that have not existed for a thousand years in his closed fists and smiles at me with rows of translucent icicle teeth. 

HELLO. 

I tell him you’ve been here before and he says SO HAVE YOU and I shake my head. No. In my ear, a voice like a laugh: HAVEN’T YOU? ​

I know of nothing more inspiring than 
that of making discoveries for ones self. 
--George Washington Carver 

​
how can i speak with ten voices / at once, become 
      a billion / bodies bridged into the ground like salt / discover
     myself twice / first as my name / then as consonants ​

The rubber girl never breaks skin, 
Not to preserve the pure, pink flesh inside, but 
To hold herself in one piece. 

Bruised, prodded, groped, shoved, 
She is thrust across vices, the hot friction setting each one aflame--
Burning them from memory, from existence— 
Leaving pieces of herself in her wake. ​