For a long time, I worried that I would become her. They said it was an organic brain disease with a late onset. You could be all regular one day and the next believe the birds and the bees were stalking you. Brains are that slippery…

Read More

Listen to Pop when he says, "We could use a sword swallower." Let hope bloom in your ribcage, tendril-tangle your esophagus; hope he means the show could hire someone else to perform this fearsome act, so when he crosses the room to tip your head back and study your throat, as if reading curves and dents to augur your fate, you can't spit out the word no…

Read More

In this wedding day photo, you see Mama in Ritsuko Obasan’s face. You are told she is the pretty one. Or the smart one. Or the feisty one. Unreliable memory. Sisters five. Surely, there are many ones. In front of her womb, her fist pulls the fabric of the kimono tight—gutto gaman / a symbol of endurance. Perhaps a gesture of strength against the future growth…

Read More

The problem was sex. And by sex, I mean kissing. Especially kissing between unmarried people or underaged kids. That was the worst kind of sex—I mean, kissing—and that was the kind American media liked best…

Read More

I walk around with my body like a double, funhouse mirror, she/they they/she are walking on top of paths we walked before more blindly, as if someone put tracing paper over a sketchy drawing and drew stronger lines this time. PhD body sees the youth, the people walking along the lines for the first time, through the scrim and loves them but can’t quite touch them, the way people touch when they are in love at the same time in the same place in the same iteration of life…

Read More