it started with a key. not mine, but pressed into my palm like a promise, like a wound that wouldn’t clot. they said, _you are the bearer now_. like i had a choice. like i could toss it in the river and sleep easy.

the key fit every door but never the ones i wanted. it opened houses i had never lived in, rooms where the air still carried the shape of someone else’s breath. behind each door, a sto...

**i. words of affirmation**

you say i love you but what i hear is i am leaving soon. you call me beautiful but what i hear is for now. i have learned to translate softness into expiration dates, compliments into countdowns. there is a window in my chest that only lets light in when it’s cloudy. i write down every good thing you say, just in case i need proof later that i was something more than t...

the trees are watching. they have mouths but no teeth, waiting for you to soften. their arms are thin, breakable, but they don’t need strength. only patience. only time.

you walk because the path is there. because forward is better than back, even if both lead nowhere. the red is climbing your ankles, wrapping around your calves like a gentle hand. like a wound that doesn’t close.

somewhere, a v...

**i. shanghai, 3:42 a.m.**

the boy on the rooftop has a cigarette between his fingers, but he doesn’t smoke. he just likes the way it burns down to the filter, slow and ruinous, the way everything else in his life is, except faster. the moon hangs above him, fat and bright, like it knows something he doesn’t. he remembers learning once that it’s just a rock catching sunlight, a thief of brightness...

the first time i step into the ocean i do it wrong.

too fast. too eager. the waves slam into my shins like hands that want me to stay, like hands that want me to drown. i think, maybe this is why they tell us never to come here. maybe this is why they say the ocean is a mouth that never stops chewing.

but the thing is, i have never been wanted before, and i have never been held. so i let it.

i ...

the uniform is the same for everyone. gray, stiff, a collar too tight against the throat, pants that never quite fit right. polyester breathing like plastic skin. a joke of fabric. a bad dream someone else designed. but if you fold the cuffs just so, if you let the sleeves hang loose like dead weight, if you wear the tie wrong—too long, too short, knotted like a noose or not at all—then maybe it b...

the car comes slow. headlights like tired eyes, half-shut, flickering between sleep and obligation. the bridge is long enough to measure a lifetime but short enough to regret every step taken onto it. the man stands where the road stops making sense, where the metal bones of the bridge hum under the weight of things that never arrived.

he lights a cigarette. he doesn’t smoke. but there’s somethin...

i wake up with my teeth in my hands. the dream still wet on my skin. in it, i was a child again, small enough to fit in the space between my mother’s voice and the slammed door. i keep dreaming about houses i can’t leave. i keep dreaming about leaving.

the past isn’t behind me. it’s a room i forgot to lock. i walk backwards into my own shadow, try to wear it like a coat. someone told me once that...

on his days off, the reaper goes to the grocery store and stands in front of the peaches for too long. watches the fluorescent light shiver against their skin, picks one up, puts it back. he doesn’t eat. doesn’t need to. but sometimes he wishes he could.

he takes the long way home, through the park, past the playground where a child stares at him too long, then cries. their mother pulls them clos...

I know every detail about every version of herself she has ever been.

I know the 6-year-old version who swallowed her name like a marble, who sat in the back of classrooms with her knees drawn up, thinking if she held herself small enough, still enough, maybe they wouldn’t see her. I know the 9-year-old who didn’t believe in God but prayed anyway, who thought love was what happened when someone s...