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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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 Silent screams with a mouth shut tight,
Flashing sirens wail with no light, Empty weeping, cheeks run dry, A raised hand in the absence of sky; I stretch out my fingers to the mobile of stars, Alas, my arms cannot travel that far.  Our lives are written on paper.
We alter our words According to the preferences of our readership. When there’s a mistake, We try to erase it,  Alba and I were virgins together
I never understood her Spanish because she spoke it too well But I loved the way she did, With rose petals the fabric of her irises and wind rushing through her veins in place of blood And one night we practiced dirty dancing to 90s hip hop hits and we were fading fast, blurring out of existence, like two blazing comets orbiting each other in the blink of a supreme being, divine paparazzi,  [Content warning: sexual assault]
Homesickness is the average temperature of a healthy human body, it’s baptizing our hands in Uncle’s ashes, specs of his life between palm creases and fingernails— we fantasize— it’s  Sometimes when people speak their words make no sense. You hear what they are saying. You
know what they are saying. You understand. It doesn’t make sense. Sometimes your words don’t make sense either. They crowd up your spine in a stream too fast to recognize, jam up the insides of your brain until the words tangle on the grooves and ridges along the letters. With steady fingers you pull them apart. You think you know what it means. You open your mouth and the knot of words tumble out and scatter.  july bleeds to death on my living room floor–
paisley dress circling a heatwave. a ghost broadcasts picture shows of vertigo, antennae glinting colors of the sun. in the closet my mouth is moth-eaten and dry– radio static muffling goosebumps of air.
 It has been nearly three years since I visited my mother’s homeland of Hong Kong. The bustling crowds and skyscrapers that pierce the sky, built on mountains upon mountains of green. I have traveled to this metropolis almost every year, forcing my way through a long 15 hours of flight, so I should believe that I’d be used to its culture; the freezing air-conditioned malls remind me to bring a sweater next time, but the second we leave the facility, I want to peel off my clothes, sticky on my skin. Family dinners with gong gong, po po, ayi’s and a spew of relatives I forget the faces of, revolve around a giant table filled with roasted meats and colorful vegetables. In order to eat at the breakfast hole-in-the-walls (buns with cookie crusts and salty meat stuffed between white bread) we must take advantage of the 12-hour jet lag to eat early in the morning. To me, this is Hong Kong.
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