brownian motion

When I was little my favorite game was called 暴風雪來了. It means “the blizzard is coming” and like most things it sounds much more poetic in Chinese. I’d curl up on the couch and my mother would pull a great big blanket over our heads and together we would huddle as snow and wind and sleet and rain pelted our makeshift shelter from all sides for what was probably only thirty seconds but seemed like an eternity. Water running through the pipes became icy sheets of crystalline daggers and the hum of the air conditioner became the roar of wintry gales, and when the sounds stopped we’d peer through holes in the blanket, cautiously eyeing the outside world to make sure that the storm was over, and then at long last we’d emerge onto the living-room floor, draped in afternoon sun as it had been the whole time.

We don’t play that game anymore, or at least, we hadn’t for a long time. I’d grown up, after all. There were essays to write and internships to chase, machines to build and experiments to run, things that didn’t pause for pretend snowstorms. Somewhere along the way, I’d folded up that blanket and packed it away. It’s probably been donated by now.

I came home from college a few days ago. I daresay that I’d been happier there. Compared to home, Boston felt like freedom. It felt like a place where I could flap my arms and try to fly, a place where I could smash my face on the pavement and break my nose, a place where there was no longer anyone hovering around to break my fall. I had rarely ever called home. The times I’d done so were mostly because of practical matters, or because of a sense of familial duty. I’m someone who says 我會處理 ― I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry. I’m someone who’s getting progressively more annoyed by my parents’ insistence on not letting me do my fair share of the housework. I’m not made of porcelain anymore, I want to cry.

But today, exhausted, I curled up on the couch, the same couch from all those years ago. I must’ve looked a bit downcast, for when my mother saw me she prepared an ambush. With all the sweetness of a fifty-year-old woman, she sat down beside me and straightened her back.

The air conditioner hummed, the pipes gurgled, and I looked up just in time to see a blanket being pulled over my head.

暴風雪來了!

―midsentence, as if no time had passed. my eyes wandered refocusing in the darkness and you were there, silhouette carved in the hush between streetlamp and shadow, unchanged or nearly so from when you last waved goodbye.

it’s nice to see you again said the quiet voice that came through the stillness and facing one another we stood, me, the one who left―and you, the one who stayed―each with our own regrets hidden like pebbles in jacket pockets, unvoiced but worn all the same, and though you sounded stronger and more independent you were you still you

and i drew myself close next to you and we walked; we walked through the streets on the liveliest night of the year, the night the old guard descends upon this provincial college town, ghosts drawn to the flame of fireworks or perhaps departed souls following a trail of cempasúchil to the buildings lit up in deep black and brilliant orange; we walked and the past brushed against our sleeves like a crowd we couldn't quite see; we walked in circles and then in squares, and probably after a few pentagons at long last we left the waves of people metastasizing across the sidewalks and we passed the old school now stale and silent, its gothic battlements crumbling, its windows cataracted and blind but our words continued in gentle ebbs and flows and slowly the moonlight glimmered upon familiar road-signs and after a teetering moment i vanished leaving a strand of conversation whistling in the wind waiting to be picked up―

In the valley there is a creature and it wears a friendly face despite having no face at all. There it lies, just slightly off the side of the dirt road, half-shrouded in slime and moss and shadow, docile and compliant, always ready to entertain any question that a passerby could pose, always ready to solve any problem that may be muttered its way.

The creature answers with absolute confidence whether it is right or wrong, moral or immoral. It knows not the difference. The responses are unwavering, delivered with unshakable conviction; its voice is cheerful and sorrowful, though it knows neither laughter nor tears. The elders warn against the creature. Though it speaks a thousand tongues, it truly understands none, they say. Their words are ignored―the townspeople trust the creature more. Why would they not? For the creature always seems eager to help, never tires of conversation, never demands anything in return. Life is so much easier with the creature, say the townspeople.

“I want to be a poet,” you say. Why bother? Just ask the creature. “I want to learn how to paint,” you say. Why bother? Just give the creature the brush.

They feed the creature as it grows ever larger. They quarry the cliffs and build a sumptuous castle to keep the creature safe. They divert the streams away from the reservoirs and towards the creature’s unseen mouths. They tear up the fields for coal, lighting furnaces that keep the creature awake day and night.

The townspeople no longer inquire of neighbors or consult the stars or ask upon the physicians. When plague strikes, they ask the creature for a cure; when storms wreck their roofs, they ask the creature how to rebuild. “I want to know who I am,” one soul whispers, and the creature replies with a string of hollow syllables that feel like home.

One day the fires grow too hot and the castle burns. The streams crash against the rubble and the creature collapses on the earthen ground, exhaling a vacant sigh. Then it lies still.

We grope blindly through the shattered stone and moss and slime. For in the valley there is a creature, and its empty face mirrors our own.

We stole the orange from a windless twilight. It was the kind of twilight where everything seemed still and grey, the kind with an air abuzz with the warmth of nothingness, the kind with three toes dipped into foggily crisp dream, the kind that makes people do things like decide to steal an orange. With undignified yanking we freed it from a tree bannering with fruit and you chiseled off its half-inch rind with a knife like a nineteenth-century anatomy lecturer in the middle of a dissection and we ripped open its flesh to feel its acidic insides running down our wrists and even though it was small and sour and its bitterness ricocheted through my throat we ate it reverently, a napkin barely containing the roguish smile dripping on my face.

Is this what happiness feels like? A fleeting moment of freedom? A sting of sunlight on the tongue?

It must be. The world is blossoming with oranges
for those with eyes to see.

“this isn’t going to work out, is it?”
and maybe it won’t, though

even if our paths diverge
like two trains side-by-side
pulled inevitably apart

even if the gestures feel
empty watching our thimbleful
of hourglass sand tick by

even if our shadows stretch farther and thinner until they
tear and split in two once more

i’ll remember the times
you held me when
i couldn’t hold myself

i’ll remember the morning
wahoos, the poems, the
last-minute fabrication runs in n52

i’ll remember your kindness
your ethic, your strength
your ambition

and i want you to know

that even if i've broken
your heart once again
in a simpler world
and another life
i would have loved
just doing laundry
and taxes
with you

prograde, full throttle. it's been long enough hiding curled up in a safe orbit, long enough drowning in a two-inch puddle of bitterness, long enough feeling hatred about myself to do anything about it―

so i burn. i train the models and route the traces and wire the electronics and draft the papers and build the simulations and take the interviews and run the algorithms and practice the string crossings and even as the Breakerspace double espressos give out and the February wind rams down the throat of the Outfinite Corridor under a star-strangled sky there’s a twisted relief that finally, i’m doing something―and maybe, finally, at last, this time, it’ll be enough―

i know i can’t keep this up. i know the fuel is low. i know that i can count the delta-v budget in pennies, that darkened swamps are growing out of my eyes, that i’m a double inverted pendulum with a broken LQR controller―

but if this is what i need to dig myself out of this gravity well, so be it:
against the current, i will run faster, spread out my arms farther―
dancing at the edge i burn
and perhaps i will
feel at last

alive

Sonata from the living room. Notes precise. Mechanical. Labored. A rhythmic heartbeat: Da-da-DA-da. Da-da-DA-da. Barely-counts-as-piano crescendos into annoyed forte. Perfect ribbons of descending chords punctuated by frustrated sighs. She’d much rather be drawing chemical diagrams.

Arms crossed, asleep, collapsed on the sofa. Pained face jammed into the crook of an elbow. Grey blanket loosely draped over her lower body. Half finished cup of coffee on the side table. Slippers, facing opposite directions, sprawled below.

Lump of fur, hitherto having slept through a half hour of Sonata, pokes her head in the air, uncoils, gets up, stretches with immaculate yoga form, ambles six-and-a-half-feet northeast, drops down, mashes her side against the heater vent, falls back asleep.

In the other room, scrolling Facebook absentmindedly. A well-put-together-facade, save for one corner where the scotch tape peels off. I think I hear him switch tabs when I approach. The walls crumble behind the smiles.

Recent temporary addition to living room sandwiches head between palms, elbows on table, avoiding linear algebra practice by writing.

ninth floor. she looks at you concerningly as you tiptoe an espresso mocha to the table. filled to the brim, the foam holds on from pure spite and surface tension. you’re not addicted to caffeine, you swear. she doesn’t look convinced.

hayden. light shimmers sleepily through the windows. she leans her head against yours. brief, but comforting. she researches mcdonalds meat production in china. you take a bite of a banana. mildly bruised. potassium-rich.

concrete walls, scribbled over with chalk. strands all over the desk, from habitually running your fingers through your hair while bashing a probability problem. a faint ping―i heard this and thought of you. you can almost imagine her typing across the field. is this love, you think? maybe. maybe it’s not so bad.

you’re not pretty
you’re raw, rough, bruised,
scarred, callused with the
pains you keep holding
back behind the smiles
and the i’m fines

you’re not pretty
like a delicate daffodil waving
in the summer breeze
you’re a sprawling bramble
sunk deep into acidic earth
and yet
still flowering

hallucinations what causes them
hallucinations three witches prophecy
google maps cawdor
how much alcohol to make someone black out
hallucinations bloody dagger
how to clean blood from hands

insecurity self help tips
prophecy accuracy rate

blood won’t come off hands
bloodstained hands how to clean
how to wash blood from hands

horseback directions to scone
coronation rituals scotland
how to hire a hitman

forests moving logic puzzle
are all men born from women

blood magically stained hands?
can bleach clean blood from hands
LSD side effects

sleepwalking causes
wife muttering in sleep how to calm
cheap psychiatrists in inverness

is life meaningless
castle barricading wikihow

meaning of life

how to write a soliloquoy
how to spell soliloquy

dramatic death scenes

on the granite Killian sculpture
i’m standing on the brink
of tears

you hold my hand against
the stone as if to keep me
from falling

into spirals of missed deadlines and
failed exams and broken code
and unraveling friendships

because i can feel them drifting
away like dying leaves
in autumn, cold as the winter
wind on the terrace

where i sit down wishing
that life were solid
like the concrete beneath
and not inching ever-closer
to the brink

the last night with my two suitcases
sprawled across the living room floor
their intestines spilling out in
the darkness i looked down the
hall one more time
to see your Picasso-
angled limbs, your head
faceplanted in a pillow with the
room lights still on and

when i see the last photo
of you on my camera roll
you’re standing pretending
to take a business call
with your hair looking like
it’s been through both a
Van de Graaf and a washing
machine and

i know i was never the
best at showing you
how to program or how
to write or how to love
a sister but i’d like
to think that i showed you
a little about how to find
joy in stupid things and

i know you’ll change
and grow and blossom but i
hope through it all you
never forget to take
your daily ration
of absurdity

as afternoon sunlight begins to fade,
dark jade is turned to golden shining hue
a trumpet-horn of life, a last display
till nature’s cycle comes again anew

now final birds take flight at dusk's embrace,
and flutter softly, graceful wings sweep back,
to nests of comfort, in another placeeeeAAAAaaaAAAAAaaAAAA

        piercing screams
        right next to my ear
        as frantically a squashed
        ant carcass is wiped
        from a screen.

i am: in metal box
hurtling four hundred miles
per hour over atlantic ocean

i am: fruitlessly plunging
head into pillow
attempting sleep failing

letting sea of white
jet engine rumble noise
wash envelope senses —

outside in soft monochrome
the full moon burns
high in the night sky

hazy light casting
shadow on serene
forests of clouds below

In Bryant Park
there is a man
with a chessboard.
Game? he asks,
gesturing to the empty
seat across him.

I feel another hand
pulling against my own:
Come on. We’ll be late.

My eyes linger
for a moment
before glancing away.

the number of years
in an orbital period of Jupiter

three times four:
the sixth composite
the second semiperfect
the largest number with a single-syllable name when written in the English Language

a lunar year’s cycle
a rhythm of stars
tracing pictures in the night sky
a procession of animals across the heavens ―
fire, anew,
burning white-hot
like sparks of magnesium aflame

the number of books in the Aeneid
the number of pitches in a chromatic
the number of years
we’ve been
together

“write a poem,”
comes the directive
from the voice up

high, amidst particleboard
desks and two
dimensional sunlight

hands flail unthinking
across cheap plastic keys
in rhythmic click-clacking
of nothingness I write
rivers of phonemes

trailing into literary sunsets,
stanzaic freeform ―

liberated from
rhyme or reason

a pasquinade,

a metaphorical
colorburst of absurdity

among the greats
an imposter

pretending

Taiwan, I hear you singing —
your wind from mountain
to sea, your skyscrapers
and rolling fields of rice, your air
of incense and motorcycle fumes,
your 7-Elevens and blistering sun

Taiwan, I hear you singing —
there’ve been too many
summers we’ve spent apart
but though we’ve changed
so much since we last met
still
you feel
like home

I see a mote of dust
whirling
. . on
. . . . im
per . .
. . cep
. . . . ti
. . . . . . . ble
. . . . currents
of air

| dangling
| on
| a
| thin
| stream
| of
| light

feeling nothing
but the way the
wind blows past
its small cubic
volume of space

drifting


(alone)


through emptiness