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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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Opera Length: the aliens will see our nighttime planet by Isabelle Kim-Sherman (17, California)12/30/2022
for Hugh's birthday
it took a while for you to spit out your first words: daddy. mummy. and when they did arrive, they were few and far between, the blooming of tanhuas, shoots that desperately Sheraton Hotel
it has all come to this: guests leaving in droves in their sparkly limousines, jostling lines at the front counter, hollow, loaded echoes of wheels on marbled granite. The Straits Times, 4 Sep 2022: “Who of these two prospective suitors would most appeal to women here - a handsome man with little to no savings, or an average-looking chap who is savvy in managing money?”
paint the streets green—forget about red. red on flags, red of the setting sun, red of our blood, red of saga seeds and passion; you shall discard them [Content warning: traumatic event/death]
In memory of the Itaewon victims they each had their own: irises, shoe size, colourful clothes. in spheres more invisible, each to the neon clouds of their dreams, flying westward faster than the setting sun-- they did not run fast enough. Coming home to you,
I lapse comfortably into our native tongue, eddying in its lilts and lulls, carousing in the famed crescendoes. It does not make sense
how we reluctantly found our way here, mecca of hearts, heir apparent to True North, past the little brick hut, past the pebbles in the rain, past the scattered hoa mai, lying downtrodden as youthful year This maze was not made for someone
with feet. I am running silently, blisters on my toes, as I remain frozen in a wooden chair. Leather seat cracking from the moisture of my nervous sweat. August
The sound of a squeaky pushcart echoed through the hallways, accompanied by the efficient click of heels striding across the tiles. The twenty-something woman glanced around the library as she pushed the cart, finally coming to a stop at the biography section. She began shelving books, pausing occasionally to read a few chapters of the more interesting ones. July 7, 2015 Dear Applicant,
Thank you for your interest in joining San Francisco’s historic Chinatown. We hope you enjoyed your summer vacation and visit again soon. Unfortunately, we can’t offer you a position at this time. Although you possess many great qualities, you’re not what we look for in an applicant. You would not mesh well with our work environment, but we hope you find success elsewhere. Is it wrong to spend my nights thinking of her,
My love for her sun-kissed sepia skin makes me kinder to my own The drape of the silk saree from her hips keeps me attentive during pooja and prayer The glassy chimes of her bangles as she tucks hair behind my jhumka adorned ear, Perfumed with jasmine and sandalwood incense, aromas of home  [Content warning: eating disorders]
At night my hands multiply. I shift through the kitchen, pantry to fridge to hidden nook and cranny with them bared into claws, and they grow eyes and minds and greedy hearts that desire indiscriminately. Anything goes. There’s no need for nitpicking because this freedom is my right through a day played by a numbers game: simple addition is grape by grape, nice linear plot that settles my nerves, never noodles or rice (God forbid a tablespoon of oil) because that is exponential and we’ll have to start over, fresh clean slate at zero, 0, tomorrow. Zero is nice because I can add it an infinite number of times, 0 to 00000000000000, and it will be the same. This equation I’ve got down to a tee, good old 0 + the free-for-all that is night, and my stomach. Rules begone (only until dawn) and I follow my multiplying hands, their greedy eyes and minds and hearts so ravenous, so eager to gorge it’ll all have been a dream by the time I wake, memories swallowed whole beneath the uncounted, unmeasured, unbound high of leftover dim sum takeout and unthawed ice cream. Morning and these two hands steeple in prayer to the neat square of nutrition labels. I wait for nightfall. |
