every time i smooth out a blank page
i'm sure i've lost all my words
spilled them throughout the day from the hole in my purse
& left me with nothing of substance to say
writer's luck to out myself as eraser shavings
when everyone expected cursive
i expect i'll get over it 
​when i'm older

I wouldn't know the love of my life
if they hit me with an armful of textbooks
and crouched to grab them
at the exact same time
as I reach out and our fingers touch.
Fireworks and butterflies.
Wouldn't know until the credits roll 
that I'd gotten my lines knotted up
missed all my cues 
rewrote the happily ever after in the end

You know every word to Despacito 
despite speaking Portuguese 
You have a chubby little cactus tattooed across your thigh
and a fresh pair of koi swimming in yin yang across your spine
You wear those sparkly rainbow booties with the three-inch heels to class
and clubbing
I suppose it has something to do with your being a dancer
How else can you explain how you never trip? Never stumble? Never fall?
Always graceful, when moving through twenty-four form taichi
or six AM meditation on the rooftop, guided by the app chiming on your phone
Tasting the thick Shanghai summer settling across our upper lips 
readying our minds for a day of pressure points and melon pops
anticipating a night of ginger Coke chasing down a sip of herbal whiskey
it's so hard to speak of you like you aren't right here
still here
I never want to put you in past tense
Keep racing up the Great Wall with me, you barely sweating at all,
me drowning in my own salt and the youness of it all
the nowness of your earthy, thrilling chuckle
You always offer me a cigarette. I always say no.
You'll die of lung cancer one day, I say, as you drag 
and exhale
and I 
​can't bring myself to move away
can't stop following the promise of fire

My palm reads like a young girl's diary
I am mostly dream, mostly crush
Not much of a realist, but muse and doctor
for friends and people who love someone else
The bright sweetness of xylitol gum,
already memory as you pop it between your teeth
I fade like that, that fast 
you'll miss me before I'm gone

Your death hurts different from the friends I've lost
to misunderstanding, to unmet expectation, to lust
I feel scraped clean by the butter knife of grief 
a used-up jar searching for closure, something to fill 
all the echo and past tense inside 
Maybe this is what they call resignation, this kind of 
loose-limbed falling 
But the living haunts me like acid aftertaste
a bite mark that won't stop bloodying my tongue
every word betrays the drowning I'm doing
How do I mourn you well when I'm still regretting 
all the funerals I will not attend for people who I love 
​and love me not?

When I close my eyes I see you
lips curling into unashamed grin
There is no self-consciousness in the curve of your cheek
Your palms lift skyward, as if reaching to receive coin
I fold my fingers into them
For a moment, you are solid, real as the eyelash in my eye
I can't think of what I want to tell you before you disappear again so
I let a giggle flutter from my throat
and you meet it there
our voices mingling in the still air
and hanging there after
even when the breeze races past 
and you are gone again

In my family
Shake Shack is a friday
where no one has made mom cry
is appreciation for shushing the dog during the conference call
is I love you sandwiched between the tomato and portabello
The grease is every time someone wipes up the crumbs on the counter without being asked
is the good mornings at half past noon
The pickle is the leftovers reheated as the table is set for lunch
The fries is getting called to eat & coming
Shake Shack is an apology for the unscrubbed toilet bowl & empty box of dark chocolate
is peace offering after being asked to take out the recycling
& getting caught in the rain
A patty is thank you for being my little brother
& please stop dropping dumbbells at 2 in the AM
Thanks for this meal
protect this family
keep the cough away
and smiles real
even if the cheese is fake
in my family
​Shake Shack is prayer answered

liberate me from quarantine
give me haircut, massage, manicure, or death
—no matter whose​​
the plague doctors sitting in public office
wait like priests that prey on children
shake their mandates like drops of water
but ​can't keep this disease from waking
staunching the main streets

unleash the wronged rights until the world
has righted its wrong oppression of my freedoms
give me this or give me death
amen 

it is past season for snow
& yet the pain of missing you 
flutters thickly down between my ribs
like fresh powder building mound after mound
of humanoid shapes
melting, disappearing
into a fluid thing
rising & flowing

I cried in front of my therapist
about you
about all the empty you left 
when you left
I hated to say it but
why didn't you say goodbye?
I wish if you had to go you'd go
knowing I wished you well in your next life
and I hoped we'd be sisters again 
even if again, too soon, you'd die
Part of me wanted to go with you
at least partway
so at least you'd be un-alone
when the part of me that was you
went home
so that I'd be ready to go 
​on without you