Photo by David Streit on UnsplashTHE NAME LYDIA MEANS “COMING FROM LYDIA”
then I suppose it shouldn’t have shocked me
when I reached out from the womb and felt the heavy
handle of a mirror. So what, if I kept it? Ping-pong was
safe cause I could play with the table up. My better self,
throwing backhands on the other side; she is always there:
hot, the right amount of Asian. If I came from her, how the apple
soared. I’m thinking about how I once drenched my cereal
in water, for there was no milk, and how I later learned
that those commercials lie anyway; flakes floating in
pools of glue, a mindset dense enough to sink into. I
did not blaze the trail; I ate my way through: a goat in
struggle’s garden, emerging slow and protuberant,
varmint-like, alive at my own cost. Self-starter
follows me around like a slur. Imagine the exhaustion:
Even the traffic lights, a photon dance
you directed in your head.
WHY I STILL HUM OUR SONGS
Kidney transplants go like this:
the new organ is laid into the body,
its vessels and ureter carefully sewn.
We watch and wait for pink
then gold. The cavity
is closed. And the native kidneys? They’re
left inside. This seems counterintuitive
at first: wouldn’t you take them out? Swap
one for another? Here’s the thing. It
would do more harm than good
to remove what was grown here, and
besides, they might still produce something
even years later, even if droplets, even though
it’s waste.
