For Kia Xiong
But it’s just an earthquake in Indiana. I love this story
because of you. We met in high school summer gym
where we turned jeans into floatation devices and tallied
bowling scores by hand. We got close in AP English
when we admitted that we read Jane Eyre in one evening,
how we loved the teacher’s tape recording of Macbeth
because we really didn’t understand what was supposed
to be funny. Back then, we wanted to be rappers or doctors,
and now philanthropic EDM DJs in Vegas. We love to chug
coffee past 11 p.m. so we can shit a final time before
a night of dancing and waddling through snow in heels
we bought after we broke up with our boyfriends.
The older we get, we are always late. Like to the Odesza concert
you won radio tickets to, how we shivered underneath
fleece blankets covered in dog hair, the outfits we picked out
months before never seen in our blurry pictures. I am writing all this
to get to what I really want to say—you are the most faithful person
I know. You believe in prayer because you believe in ghosts,
in vengeful spirits because you’ve seen them. Once, you asked
if I thought you were silly for being so superstitious
and I said no—I pray when I am scared, the only time I take
in Jesus’s name I pray seriously. Me trusting my mouth and you,
for good measure, hanging a picture of Jesus above the bed,
a crucifix, and a Bible on your nightstand even though
we don’t read it anymore. Here, I try to conjure images
or metaphors of our selves but I can only remember
what we say to each other—isn’t it funny how every Asian girl we know
is engaged or about to be engaged to a white boy or
don’t trust white moms from Carmel because they voted
for Trump or we’d rather them smile at us while keeping their hate
to themselves or isn’t it funny we don’t go out anymore or this is better
than the drunk white boys who follow us to the car all the time
or after midnight or our mothers this our mothers that or—
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