"Do you miss me?" it asked.

She didn't answer.

"Tell me I didn't love you."

Not the way you should have.

"What do you know?"

Nothing. I don't know. Except that you were wrong.

"You left me, I never would have left you."

Maybe.

"If you cared you would have stayed."

That's cruel. If I didn't care, this never would have happened. 

You were perfect for me. I can't ever deny that. You were everything I ever wanted. 

And you knew me perfectly. 

You knew me. And you knew that it would hurt me. 

And yet you did it anyways. You knew, and you chose not to say anything. You knew and you were never going to tell me if I'd never found out. So what good did knowing me do?

In the end you just loved what I could do for you. 

Do I miss you? I tried not to let myself get that far. I never let myself stray too close to regret. But you were everywhere. There was too much of you to burn away. If I did, there would have been nothing left of me. 

But now? Now I'm cutting off the flesh you put on my bones. Now I'm burning the scars. Because I have enough of me now. Enough to make it.

It hurts. Now I look back and know I missed you. I know I did. Now I feel all of it. 

I never wanted to leave.

She pulled a piece of paper from the box. It was a second copy of the card that she drew for their second anniversary. She'd been saving it for their wedding day. She fingered the bent corners and thought about all the time that had passed.

 Such a stupid little thing. 

All yellowed paper and pencil marks.

Where does it go now? What do I do with all these words? Words that held the bricks of my world together. Words that filled the empty spaces between my ribs. Words that tied the strings between my bones. 

You're not here anymore. You're so far beyond the reach of my hands, grasping through the looking glass of my memories.  There's nothing to burn. There's nothing there.

How do I burn away the phantom limbs? The memory of completeness. 

How do you forget the feeling of something that is no longer there?

She picked up the box. She packed it in her bags and carried it with her until the day she would step into the flames and let the fire burn them all away.

I remember the dream the same way I remember things that happened last week, or things from my childhood. It was so normal and familiar, filled with so much personal detail that even with the realization that it was a dream, it still a bit hard to separate it from my reality. I was living my life, surrounded with my friends and family, but everything was so grey, hovering on the edge of darkness and threatening to tip me over. It was like some dark personality looked into my heart and found every single little thing that would hurt me. Not the obvious pains and fears, but the smallest most sinister ones, and he stuck each one into me like a needle, just tiny pin pricks, but over and over until I was covered in needles and moving just a little bit would just push them even deeper. 

I struggle with feelings of anxiety sometimes, and they always seemed so unfounded and unreasonable and they were; but I could never really figure out what exactly would make me so anxious to live my life and spend time with the people I love and enjoy. And I realised that I'm terrified of the moments where being surrounded by my friends and family makes me feel even lonelier than when I'm alone. I went through a period where I felt that so strongly, that it made me so selfish and bitter and fearful. So much so that I couldn't find the will to give and love to those that I knew I loved. I hate that part of me and I never want that to be me again. 

So I'm going to try even harder now, to never let that happen again. Even though I'm afraid, even though I'm still terrifyingly selfish. To remember that loneliness is just some dark creature from my dreams trying to keep me from loving the people I love. But it was just a dream, and my loved ones are my reality. And I'll fight for them and fight to be me, because it's the least I could do. To be the me that they fell in love with in the first place. 

I'm a fool, for indulging in you. For hoping you would make, something of me. You asked for the apple, but your hand pointed back at me.

I was inspired by Renee Stout's "Conjure Woman" and the events of my own personal life to create two characters: Lily and Inara.

As a younger girl, I always had trouble talking and making friends. My solution was to come up with different versions of myself, different, more confident versions who had many friends and no inhibitions. I never gave them names, nor really distinguished between them. Eventually I think they all became a part of me, but to this day, I still don't really know what's real and what I invented for my imagined survival.

These two characters are created to express the power and weakness I feel as a woman and as a woman of Asian heritage. I'm taking inspiration from Hannah Wilke as well as Jerome and Joel-Peter Witkin.
*Adrian Piper- Catalysis

"It is a privilege to paint such difficult things" - Jerome Witkin

I never called them nightmares. Not even when I was little. I always called them bad dreams.

I was sitting by myself in a cafe, next to the floor length window that faced the streets. And then I hear screaming, and glass shatters. I fall down right under the window ledge which is about a foot high, just covering my body. A man walks up, white, bearded, with an AK gun. For a second there's the silence where he stares coldly through the window, and then he starts spraying. I'm on my back propped up the slightest bit on some broken piece of furniture. He hasn't seen me yet. There is no where to move, the spray is right above me. More glass shatters on top of me as he shoots through more of the window. I don't know how realistic this is but I feel the force of bullets flying past me. I feel bodies hitting the floor and unintelligible sounds as they call out. I'm afraid to look. I try to look dead, I want to close my eyes but I can still see him just standing there; once a step forward and once to the left. I keep waiting for the terrible pain of bullets ripping through some part of me. I want to cover myself, I want to run or scream at him.

So often I think about these things happening. I think before I leave for events. I think when I'm sitting in class, or in a church service, or a movie. I map out my exits, gauge their entrance points. I try to imagine situations where we're all heroins, a few of us die to make sure the rest can have a fighting chance to live. I imagined rushing through whatever bullets to try to slow down the attacker, to make him drop his gun. But lying on the floor, with the spray of bullets coming inches above you. You know the second you sit up that you're dead. Not a martyr's death, just someone who ran into the line of fire. It would do no good, and no help. I woke up before the end.

I don't know which would have been worse for me. To sit up, into the line of fire, or to sit up in the silence and turn around to see the people I had just been having coffee with, all dead, and yet I survived.

I wake up in a world where people are dying. I'm late for work, they are dead, and I survive.
And I have to make coffee for 200 people in the next 4 hours.

I woke up in the morning, in a word, hopeful. Motivation in the form of joyful anticipation of good company. Everyday, waking up in NY is a bit surreal, but walking out of the hostel doors and into the city streets is even more surreal The strange realization of my freedom and isolation is frighteningly exhilarating. But I can never shake the feeling of needing to depict a certain image here on the streets of New York. Later in the night, we were talking about the "New York Edge" how it seems like all NYers have an aura about them, an edge, that you don't find anywhere else. A sureness and nonchalance that is completely out of my means of expression. It's actually quite a tiring act to keep up.


Just making my way over to my chosen cafe meeting place that morning was a bit of an internal panic. Perhaps one of my worst nightmares is finally deciding on a place to be and going there and finding out that there's no room to sit. Well, La Colombe Coffee is a tiny little place with maybe 10 seats off to the side of the restaurant and that's assuming that perfect strangers are comfortable with sitting across from each other at a square-foot, triangular table. In my absolute terror I just putter around their selection of coffee and teas and end up buying two sets of teas intended as gifts for people. The place is so busy that the barista actually started just taking people's orders before they got to the counter and I, being caught off guard, said no when she asked if I was ordering a drink.  Thank God my drink selection was easy and seating somehow cleared up just as I finished at the counter.


I quickly sat and then was faced with the next conundrum as to what I was supposed to do while waiting for my friend and coffee. Regardless of what people might say to the contrary, I don't think it's completely socially acceptable to sit and stare off into space for more than 3 minutes. So I took out my journal and began to do what apparently everyone does according to Instagram. Sketch and write. Well... those who know me know I have terrible penmanship, so I was sure the illusion of being a traveling artist would be shattered as soon as anyone took a closer look at my pages. But in a way I was happy, I'm always surprised at how happy I am when I'm drawing or writing, because I never see myself as an artist or a writer. 

My wonderful, wonderful friend arrives and I am floored at the happiness and relief that washes over me when I recognize his familiar face in the crowd. Truly, no one has ever looked so beautiful (I'm only half exaggerating). Small talk and pleasantries never really last long with us, it'll be about 10 seconds of that before we start getting into the real conversation, storytelling. He's always been very no-nonsense.


My backpack is breaking. I buy a new one. It's a bag from STATEbags, they donate a fully stocked backpack to an American child in need for each bag purchased. It's more expensive than I'd have ever imagined paying before; but after living out of a suitcase for a month, I walked into my room and felt an immense amount of pressure from all the CRAP I had. And everything had so little value to me because it was just cheap stuff and there was so much of it. I couldn't keep track of anything, and I didn't want to. So I decided to throw everything out and only keep things that were special and useful.


We met up with another friend for lunch, and as we were talking,walking. and shopping it started snowing pretty heavily and the wind picked up. But I remember walking between them at one point in the horrible weather and feeling so warm inside. What a wonderful privilege to walk in between people you love, and who love you enough to spend a day in a snowstorm with you.




We decide to go for drinks later, because my newly 21 year old self is still pretty engrossed in the idea of storytelling over beer. After all, that's what they did in the old days, right? Kelly was so intent on buying me my first pickleback shot at her favorite bar, but it was so crowded because of the game that we couldn't even really get seats let alone talk or hear each other. At a slightly less crowded bar, we meet up with a videographer who's work I've been loosely following for a while. And I was struck by the peculiar sort of chemistry that happens when humans come together. There were so many amiable interactions that night but I remember sitting in my chair watching my friends, old and new, exchanging perspectives and learning from each other. And I knew that this is what I had come here to do, to witness and be part of these sorts of interactions.



Of course it wasn't all sunshine and daisies all the time. There were small moments that would mar the general feeling of elation in the day, but even with these small moments I found that small victories could be made. A "thank you" for taking a flyer at a fairly aggressive protest. The distance kept when solicitation is firmly ignored. The respect that comes with the expression of complete honesty.


It's enough to make me feel hopeful. That my life and how I live it will make a difference, regardless of how small or weak it might be. But I am part of a generation of people who try (imperfectly) to love and respect and create good. I'll gladly do all I can to be part of that.