The barber asks, “When was the last time you had your hair cut, sir?”

Overnight, we’d fallen into another world, one where the Earth wasn’t in space anymore, but in a man’s house…

I was twelve when words became a shelter, / a room no one could evict me from.

The little sore had reopened and it was bleeding.…

Suburban drudgery to the head I come untethered / from the birthing plane…

say i’m foul—my mother was too / the grave keeps good records…

If night is now, I will close my eyes / and wake into last year before you died…

Through trial and error / we've come up with a system / for seeing each other. // It goes like this:

Spring is the orange rows of tiger lilies outside my mother’s kitchen window…

It started when you fell asleep on the chaise lounge on your patio after spending the night in the hospital…

What was he thinking / When he placed the lightbulb // In the space between his molars? / He bit down, jaw clicking…

What proof can I give that I cannot work, / that my very brain is bruised? // Shall I be unborn?

Don’t cry. You cannot cry now. Your mother can. Your sister can. You need to be their floor, their walls, and their ceiling. Don’t cry.

What was my texture, you asked, as if I’ve felt / myself up, which no one confesses / to in public. My texture was diamond. A girl’s best / friend wasn’t shiny, but Teflon.

Life might be different had you / listened to what the doctor’s said: “take your meds.”/ But you don’t listen to the ones you love most, / So why hear out the ones you can’t stand?

They declared me alive at 7:59, a minute before / policy promises another night, another shift of / nurses sweeping by, more IV and trays for you. / Instead, they said Take care, don’t let him die…

Lightning bugs are endangered / They weren’t when we were three / Or maybe they were and we / Caught them anyway…

My cousin called me / girly and I've been scared / of him since. Six plus / years my junior.

My mother swooned at my reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast: riboflavin, acetate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacinamide, calcium bicarbonate…

When I first move to Flint, my house is / sandwiched between the two other Asians in the city: / the old Thai woman and the half Japanese man.