a: Wow, that song was from my valium playlist. It feels vastly different, almost emptying, to hear a song like that after a long, long time.

b: Why do you still have it then? 

a: Perhaps— precisely for the feeling of being emptied. And not in the slow and torturous way that toothpaste tubes go when you force out the last bits of paste, maybe more like a water balloon exploding, powerful, loud, and all at once.

b: And two months from now you’ll hear a trance song and say what of it?

a: Ah, that song was from when I met a boy who taught me how to dance.

b: Crazy. Now hand me that lighter.

Look at the time and you say it is morning. Look at the time and I say time is a mathematical equation and I have transposed myself to the other side to find you. Circle you. Underline the length of your body with mine.

I love you because you are the old comfort in a new home— the clinking of a teaspoon against a coffee cup at six in the morning, the heat from the first sip, the silence that fills the room except for places where my footsteps are. Some things don’t change and I am thankful we will always have what is familiar. Same bed in a new address. A different room for the same boy. The usual cup of coffee. An old love rooted in a new body.

I remember how you looked as you stood from the bed to walk to the refrigerator. Your back faced to me, I pretended I was meeting you for the first time. A Monday made for mundane drinks and humdrum conversation: hello, I am tired and you look tired and maybe you know exactly what it’s like to break (little by little). We switched bar stools because mine was wobbly and my elbow brushed your arm. “There’s that look in your eyes again—” you said with a concerned laugh, “—that look that you want me but I’ll never have you no matter how much I wanted you.” After the confusing cab ride of your place or my place or let’s not go anywhere anymore, here I am. And you are coming back to the room with a glass of water. There’s a poem I will not tell you about, except here, if you find this. Did you notice how I left my shoes pointing away from the bed instead of towards it? I want you, but I am giving you that look.

I learned how to eat with chopsticks so I could impress a boy. It was during one of those dinners with family friends when I was six or five, and there was this boy on the other table who looked about my age. He was seated beside his father, and together they ate ramen from a steaming bowl, their hands wielding chopsticks in synchronized grace. I was envious of how skilled the boy looked. Perhaps right there, underneath the orange restaurant lights, was my first encounter with the word ‘handsome.’ 

I fumbled with my chopsticks that night, and I probably didn’t get it right until high school. In high school, I learned how to play the guitar so this other boy could teach me songs we liked after class. It didn’t take long for me to realize I lacked the natural talent for the instrument but I strummed along anyway, happy to spend those minutes flipping through song hits, struggling to hear the difference between sharps and flats. 

This is also the story of how I first started reading Dave Eggers and how I bought all those Green Day albums at once. And why I watched Tony Hawk videos long before I got on my first board. A lot of the things I love started with boys I liked, and I am not ashamed to admit that. Because even though those crushes have fizzled out into the summers of my clumsy youth, I could pick up a guitar and stumble my way through Norwegian Wood or anything by Josie and the Pussycats. I can tell you “What is the What” and snipe my way through Counter Strike. I can cruise on my longboard on quiet Sunday afternoons with Dookie blasting through my earphones. All these magical things because I can love without always being loved back.

Tonight, this boy and I are at a dimsum place and he gestures to the waiter to ask for a spoon and a fork. I look at him gently when I break my chopsticks and think: he probably never liked a Chinese girl before. 

J. asked me if I was afraid of heights and I laughed and must have said something accidentally coy like ‘I’m hardly scared of anything.’ The rooftop was around forty floors above the ground and I’ve never seen the city (my old city) from way up there before. This city was someone’s palm and all its streets and tiny alleys were veins that tingled with the tincture of familiarity of home. “I used to live there,” said an ache I thought had gone to sleep. Being on that rooftop reminded me of a house now folded away into memory, map-like and meaningful but not mine. This city was someone’s palm and its streets reminded me of hands I could no longer hold, and that made me tremble a little, like I was afraid of heights.

Thirty-three square meters. Maybe this room would expand if I typed it out like that, extended, stretched apart like the patience it took to withstand a day inside it. 33 sq.m. The number did not mean so much on paper. Only when I brought in two wall-to-wall bookshelves, one full-size refrigerator plus the lazy orange couch, did I realize that I needed space for the big, black traveling bag of history I dragged through the door when I first got here. That bag grew heavier with every morning, and one day, I will no longer be able to lift it. And so it just lies there, waiting in a dark corner under the bed where it gathers dust and doubt and rain.  

To make more space, I had to master the art of curling up into one’s self. Knees meeting chin. Bones rolled. Arms wrapping themselves around this body like thread to spindle, story to context, past to present. I read and write and eat hunched on the couch like a ball and like a child. Either way, it is a return to a beginning, the point of inertia, potential, a “before this happened.”

Only at night can one see how the the sky is dotted with stars spaced apart like zipper marks. This is how it feels to be inside someone’s big, black bag of history. This city, this heavy night inside it too. It will rain and rain until the traveling bag decides it could no longer hold an ocean. By then, will I be ready to swim up to the surface? Introduce myself to the morning, make light known: “this is where I begin again.”

There are things you see only when you eat alone. The past few months have given me practice. Take your upside-down reflection on the spoon’s surface, or how the warmth of a coffee cup is enough to warm your hand. If you feel the need to be kissed, order soup and sip slow. They say it’s better to bring a book to the table but don’t. There’s a lot to read from here. People and who they’re with and undertones of conversations in the rise and fall of forks and spoons. Don’t they sound just like voices? And pay attention to water, how it just sits there, cold to cool to (tell me when you know). Listen very slowly, so the next time you dine with someone, you can ask: have you ever noticed how rain always seems to start and end by a window?