Books & Reflections

(To be revised.) It’s getting easier, not because I’m growing, but because I know myself, I know the pattern; I’m able to bear it through, wait for it to pass. It’s easier because I foresee its coming, I understand its passing and know its timing. It used to be an energy-sapping total wear-down because I would fight it when it comes, but I never won the fight, and it exhausted me. Now it’s like a wound, a soreness, that I bear with, and accepted; except that I don’t accept it

1. There, under the muffy yellow light and the freckles of toothpaste on the mirror, are a string of floss and a bobby pin, cast into the trashcan or unevenly on the side. It is not entertaining, it is not engaging; not motivating, adventurous, a dream or a granted hope. I look far away over the muffy room, beyond the hum-drum of the electric toothbrush. There, on the sunny, crowd-centered bench, are friends, eyes creased, of humor, shoulders arched back, enjoyed. And for a s

What I have in me surfaces in a sudden splash of ink, plopped onto the canvas, making the observer jump. I sit very still, in my warm-toned, buttoned cardigan—upright, slender, my expression stilled. I am aware, and stiff, and constrained. Thus when red gushes onto the canvas, the observer blinks, is startled. Red splashes clumsily, in a burst of intense motion. When I laugh and when I exclaim, I rush forward. And I roll my eyes, and twist my mouth in humorous sarcasm, a wry

I say that I want to leave here for California, but a fortune-teller whisper suggests that I never will. Not because I'm trapped, but out of my own free will. How ironic, because New York City is this place that made me say "I feel trapped" and "I'm so stuck." This place makes me feel like I have no place. Whichever room I enter, I feel like either an outsider or an imposter. I'm not high enough yet not low enough; not cool enough and not uncool enough; not fancy enough and n