Rest

My roommate heads to the bathroom and the bright, setting sun beams on the bundle of clothes she's about to pack. A Chinese translation of Sophie's World is on her desk, an English translation on mine. Coincidence. The threads of her black wool sweater flicker under the air condition.

Everything is still, as if every job in the world is done. The world claps its hands, says "okay", and puts its hands on its waists, looking around at its completion. Nana Sinam's curtain is pulled over the edge of my bed and the sun shines through as if it is her soul. I can hear Jesus saying, "It is finished."

I could see flecks of dust conjoining and I remember hoping to have a part of me linger after death. And maybe bits of my skin and nails will flicker in the air, and the sunlight will expose the dust like a ghost at night. It will be like cutting up pieces of paper and calling it confetti, cutting our long hair and calling it donation. But it feels more like burning a rose and calling it ashes.

We will put one foot in the water and the other on the pebbles, one in Virginia and the other in Maryland. And we'll be like gods, in multiple places within the same second. And we'll finally be those objects, the ambiguous rock and the lunch box, the pearl, and the crunchy leaf. We'll finally know how it feels to be a carpet. We'll remain like a strand of hair dangling on your shirt, annoying your arm.

I tell him to tell me things, that the snow sleeps calmly up north, that there are miraculous oddities with certain animals. I sleep with the phone in my warm hand and await the feeling of Christmas morning in September.

September in 2012

I always liked looking at things rather than living them. I remember when I was a child, I thought there was some royalty to stairs, that dresses would dangle and brush against each step, slowly and teasingly. When we finally moved into a two-story home, I went up each stair carefully with my elephant slippers, but I was forcing out a feeling that did not exist, trying to feel what walking-up-and-down-stairs must feel like. I want to take pictures of the homes I see on the brown line and the stairs that lead to the balconies. But I don't want to walk on them. I want to glide past each building and see snippets of lives through windows all in mere seconds. I don't want to be at a party on the roof; I want to see it, to see all the different lives that are in one life, one planet, a person with a million problems handing a bouquet of flowers to another person with a million problems. I want to stand on a ladder and paint my apartment light blue and red and to watch the sunset and the cross out in the distance and hear the "eeeeeeee" in the wheels passing by behind me, blowing my hair. My shirt lifts, too, and they can see my belly button.