We two are sumo wrestlers, wedging between the nooks of one another’s flesh with all the force of Venus’ atmospheric pressure, panting like carnivorous bovine animals as we fight to resist our expulsion from the ring.

This is what it must’ve felt like to exist as the Minotaur, Asterion, before he was slain into non-being by ( Read more... )

 We are hungry ghosts.

I was reborn into the realm of insatiability as a preta, and found myself collapsed like an empty, pried open freshwater mussel on the parched earth, all convex stomach and chiseled out limbs.  “Please,” I used to plead with the air.  “I just need something to drink,” I’d say, curling myself into a logarithmic spiral like ( Read more... )

            This is the only way I know how to talk about my hypomania.  I am capable of making sense of some rudimentary physics concepts because they are inherent to my very being: oscillations, for me, can occur within the same day, within the span of a few hours, within one week, within each individual month that ultimately accumulates into ( Read more... )

1) Last week, I lost three and a half pounds.  Food dropped low in set of priorities, and appetite had run away from home.

2) This week, I’m sure I’ve reacquainted myself with weight, as I’ve been distractedly consuming gourmet M&M’s and Cadbury eggs and chocolate covered pretzels from my Easter basket.  Don’t even notice I’m digesting it, just ( Read more... )

Friday night, where are you?  I’m lonely again.  I want to drink myself to non-memory.  I want to find an anonymous boy to get under my shirt.  “I don’t make a habit of this, by the way,” I would explain.  “It’s just a phase I’m going through,” I’d reassure him (or rather, myself) as we made our way to the graveyard.  I want to feel spiritual and ( Read more... )

I.

I’m not beautiful enough to be a Rita Hayworth, or wistfully doe-eyed and sad enough to look like Judy Garland, and I will never be as thin or chic or experienced as Carrie Bradshaw. Sometimes I like to imagine what I might get away with if physicality could only be served up at a buffet, and I could stuff myself full with the traits that all ( Read more... )

[I just finished writing this in all my early morning insomnia, and I’m realizing now that it reads like a young adult paperback that bronzed middle school girls buy as a diversion during their summer beach trips, but I don’t really care.]

Today, for Accepted Students day, I stood by St. John’s pond for nearly two hours, branded with a sunflower ( Read more... )

Today, I've been thinking about how there was a time when I was serious about being a legitimately productive writer. It wasn't so long ago, really. (Actually, I guess the truth is, that was nearly 12 months ago now, but it's a scary realization that I've been gone from Carver for that many minutes, hours, days.) Anyway, at the end of my senior ( Read more... )

Because the Western world is so steeped in Christianity, I think many of us, no matter what our religion, have located somewhere in our minds a distinct conception of Jesus. Lately, I’ve been working to assimilate fragments of various South and East Asian traditions (i.e. Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism) into some sort of cohesive ( Read more... )

When my parents drive me back to school after a weekend hiatus spent lounging and dancing in Baltimore, I sit in the backseat, another piece of baggage amidst my overpacked suitcases. This is the time I use to study their faces in the rearview mirror, to absorb how old they've gotten, to notice the way their foreheads live in a constant furrow. ( Read more... )