Life is on stitches? Can I see her interstices? The lacunas, gaps, and hiccups along the thread's journey slitting in and out-- Stop. What is that thread? Index cards, smiles, almond-shaped eyes, a foreign accent, English tomes. Do they make up the lining on cuffs, or the cross-hatching knee-patches on jeans? Does it sustain fanciful…
Meeting with a Long-Time Friend
The first thing I noticed was the flash of her earrings. They were golden leaves, twinkles that framed her face. Her hair was pulled back into a neat burn, her eyes softly drooping as I last remembered them. Trails of glitter glimmered around them. Something new, or maybe not. We hugged, arms hoping to remember…
Notes on a coworker
Her name is R_SE. She's tall -- wonderfully so. She has quirky interests. She once brought in fragrant oils that affect one's energy level. She also takes caffeine pills. Her voice is a swath of cool cloth, a minty mouthwash. The way she addresses customers is honest, not obsequious. She calls me a rock, a…
My Privilege
My privilege. I am an Asian-American, one of the minority. But I live in a middle-class suburban area. I went to an elite college. Full scholarship. Well, maybe a few thousand spread over the course of four years. An all-expenses-paid trip to study abroad, with some left over afterward to fund a personal pilgrimage. My…
Varnish
She applied the varnish on her brush and brought the stiff bristles in contact with the wooden panels, but not before a tear slipped out of her eye and made its hasty descent to the floor. She saw it dive to its end where it lay splayed out, an oblong and flattened puddle that glanced…
a snippet of praise
Who holds up the world? A pagan god, an idol, a beautiful pea coat, a boy? I choose God (my God!) to hold up my world. I choose my God to be the center of my world. Praise Him. Snippet
Sonamu
A pine tree is an old lady in loose trousers bent over her neighbor's garbage bag. She digs for food to feed her grandson whose mind roams like a child's, whose right eye is clouded over by a film of the world's indifference, whose gratitude abounds for the kimchi that his grandmother made from which white…
Let us choose the word
It is a known fact that our forefathers praised the quill as being mightier than the sword. Nowadays, quills, if at use at all, have their origins from the ordinary pigeon and the porcupine. The colonists on the other hand snapped their feathers from the heads of bald eagles. They had noticed how effective these…
Homage:
Ms. Savage writes a sentence on the whiteboard and turns around to explain. Her strawberry-blonde hair is pulled back into her usual pony tail. She stands at a compact five feet in height, and pulls off pencil skirts and stiletto heels with ease. She looks all around savage: a bulldozer blasting away all grammatical pitfalls…
Substitute “Confidence”
"I wish you had more pluck in yourself," her friend texts. She imagines herself as a plump chicken with feathers begging to be plucked. The other day, she had been gutting out her computer of unnecessary files and had come across a diary entry: "I have grown more plucky after my harrowing 10-minute presentation in…
inner stitches - interstices 