The Shot
With the softest of touches, it was released. Wide open -- but with the defense rapidly closing in, arms outstretched, trying its best to block it.
The Island
Warm UV rays and vitamin D kiss my skin almost like my mother used to in the morning. The sky adorns a beautiful translucent hue of blue with matching water, while the waves that crash along the white sanded shore almost match the very few, far and in between floating marshmallows overhead. Twenty or so paces behind me, palm trees and other plant life ooze for a half mile down the coastline, in both directions, serving as a natural boundary line—as if it's walling in secrets.
Work Search Requirements
My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour. When he became a driver’s license examiner, he earned a few pennies more. Though he was hired for his Vietnamese, he couldn’t keep up with needing to speak English to the DMV’s majority white clientele. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese test takers couldn’t drive. Still, they insisted he pass them anyway, citing compatriotism over common sense and safety.
Life Cycles
My mother says we’re strapped to a cosmic wheel, and you can’t just press a start button and expect to escape suffering. But Ama takes me on Sundays, and we run through the aisles laughing, flinging open the doors to every machine, witnessing rebirth: a crow gushing out like ink, a doe climbing out on wobbly legs, an octopus blended into jelly.
I try saying a prayer for a NICU baby
I hear her saying the Lord’s prayer to them while they squirm and bat away the sticky readers on their little bodies. she is gentle. she has the patience only a mother could have. no matter how many times her children have kicked at her stomach and cried she has always come back to nurture them. she smiles at them and says, “Amen.”
Hopscotch
There amongst weeds and wildflowers grown higher than my head–there, hidden from plain sight in this vacant lot amid burnt-out buildings, I join a troop of secret girls, accepted without question as one of their own.