God

Not the gluttonous delight,
nor the pleasure of orgasm.
Not the way salt sticks to a hard-boiled egg,
nor the tornado,
but the one quick sunset thereafter,
the musky pink sky darkening
and now your hair tangled and dry like weeds.
The sadness of overhearing a song through thick walls,
and singing it achingly slow while the real words have passed,
a new song is on. You have an epiphany.
The ripple of water after turning off the stove,
and the miraculous inflation of your bellies,
breathing healthily now.
This day only happens once in your life,
or thrice,
or never.

The End of the World Through a Child's Eyes

When God would join us, too,
and kneel down on the floor with the rest of us,
snap his fingers or flick the light switch,
and we'd all go to sleep.

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And what different am I from the others who have written about the leaves jingling like bells? And why is that so wrong? because of this force pushing us into what we ought to be? a damned species made to die, and to fear it throughout our lives, of listening to the leaves and sight-seeing in Nashville, and then passing on that dying life to other little humans?

Then what makes a species, Eve? And what is so wrong about being the same when you have the ability- and choice- to  be happy, though it feels as if you don't? Then you searched and searched at the different, yet similar faces, and looked hopelessly into your hands, and then you saw it- your fingerprint- different from them all, unique and authentic. Then Kitty read your palm, her breath smelling like sour cinnamon. And you looked at the sunset, dark blue and orange, and you said to the sky, "For me?"

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.

Bird outside the kitchen

The birds come to our bird house every day. Specks of seeds bounce against the window and sound like thick hornets crashing into glass. If I could be an animal, I'd be a finch. My mother brings the hot pita bread she has heated over the flame and places it over a paper towel. We dip the pieces into Lebanese yogurt and smile as we eat, watching the birds come and go, some fighting to make room on the bird house.

I tell her how it never gets old to watch them eat, always so frantic, looking up, down, through the window. She smiles silently and then looks down with a bigger smile, dipping her bread.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," she says. "It's just sometimes I think that my dad sends these birds to check up on me.....and make sure everything is okay. I like to think that he comes in this form to see me."

The Garden

She was quiet and thoughtful. She took out a shovel and uprooted each heavy plant while pushing the shovel down with her flip flops. The sandals bent and dented into the shape of her sole and I told her to wear safer shoes. She was silent and shook her head with a smile.

After scooping and pulling and sometimes being hindered by rocks underground, she managed to uproot the heavy plant. I saw hundreds of roots being revealed in a dirty white and they tore and stretched like an old ship tilting and breaking, sinking slowly and heavily in the water. There are roots to everything even when things become bland and desensitizing, a habit we ritually do. There are roots in me.

She tells me she wants to plant the small bulb I manage to pluck out so that she'll remember me. And I just imagine being dead by next spring, blooming as a reminder to my family.

The bulbs look like onions. Once you slice and kill the fruit, you can throw its remains back into the soil and it'll resurrect. Keep the spark alive. Pass the baton. We are living because of what is now dead.

My body weakens when I encounter cigarettes. When I recover and smell the cigarette smoke of others, my body will know to defend itself; it is now stronger. And when I let someone hurt me, I begin to learn that I deserve better. I am now stronger. My body learns its lesson and so do I.

But life is not metaphor. We will not resurrect. We will merely be compost, a fertilizer. "Hey, it's your turn now," we'll say to the unborn. And we'll pass the baton to them.