I've initiated the art of flash reading.
The Art of Flash Reading
Superfan
...Why did I follow her meekly all the way to Thailand? Why did I allow myself to be dragged here in the first place? As we walked along the dirty sidewalk, I pondered these questions, and unwillingly admitted the answer—because she is my mom. In Chinese culture, filial piety is the prime virtue; as a daughter, I owe my mother unwavering respect, gratitude, and obedience. Resistance would have brought harsh criticism from all sides of the family: “Your mom works so hard for you, and she just wants you to go to a concert with her. You are a person without gratitude…” I wanted to scream, “I don’t want to go!”
crossing over; watershed; state of affairs; the roach; the ole switcheroo
we'd been spit forward from our youth and were now in middle school. the building looked more like a prison than most prisons did...
Young and Hungry at the Bacchanal
We finished work at five. No time for dinner. The weather was bleak and getting bleaker, windshield wipers swatting sleet and sleet still coming, brake lights strung like beads along a northbound red zone—Google Maps rerouting. Thirty minutes turning into forty, forty into forty-five, but this could be our lucky break. We were determined to arrive.
Indigo; Double Jointed; Modern, Still Mary; Photosynthesis
. Look, she said, pointing at the painting of arms like vectors to an otherwise armless place. We hunched before canvas after canvas laying our sketchbooks on the floor, lead scattering ant-like under our scabbed elbows. This is what it takes to be made right: to follow the leash of each other’s bare hiccups, our impressions of the world yet unformed.
All I Used Was My Mind
Frustrated, I swiped up on my phone and went back to Instagram. I had to triple-check if it was her account because all I could see was that she had no posts. But it didn’t make any sense, there was just the one with her cat, the earlier one with her baking cookies, the one where she was at the gym with her cousin, the one where she and the same cousin were hanging outside her house, and the one where she and the same cousin were at a garden, with him helping her feed the koi fish. It was all gone.
She blocked me.