part 2
~nine~
You watched yourself bleed, red blossoming against a manilla pillow. Your teacher walked you to the nurse’s office, where you cried tears of humiliation. Am I dying? You asked yourself. Am I dying?
~ten~
The year your grandfather passed away.
~eleven~
The year you thought you would receive your Hogwarts letter but never did, so you began to dip your hands in ink, and pen poems in the sunlit classroom on the first floor, where the walls were painted canary yellow.
When the first words came from your pen it was like a spattering of light creeping against the horizon at dawn.
Yes, you thought to yourself. Yes.
~twelve~
Your hands developed a mind of their own: rereading, retyping, perfecting. Over and over.
2020. You cut your hair and wore your face mask, slowly letting reality trickle away. There was something satisfying about it all. Escapist.
~thirteen~
You befriended the silence, hiding behind your mask as you withdrew into a world of your own making. You had 2 friends, but weren’t close with them. I’m not lonely, you told yourself.
~fourteen~
You entered high school with a mask on your face, and the friends who you thought would stay, left. Hallway crushes prevailed out of convenience. You wrote prolifically; longing flooded your heart. I’m not lonely, you told yourself. I’m not lonely.
~fifteen~
You were forced to be friends with the most beautiful souls you have ever encountered. They helped you discover your voice.
“Forced” you say jokingly, but you know a part of you chose this all along: chose to become who you are now; chose to seek out friendship that shaped you for the better.
You tear up just thinking about it.
~sixteen~
You worked yourself so hard that you forgot how to breathe. So you turned to your writing.
Slowly, you overcame your fear of sharing your words, and confidence erupted. You read your poetry from that sacred place within, speaking healing into visceral wounds.
~seventeen~
A year of rejection, and then of meditation.
Months of sitting in silence, of planting memories with tender hands, and soaking in the joy that surrounded you. You learned what it meant to love life, and to love people. This is the year you cultivated a home.
In your heart.
~eighteen~
You sit here at a wooden desk, typing words that existed long before your birth. From day to day, memories return of places you have never been. These memories arrive involuntarily, a sense of deja vu that creeps up on you.
There is one place never leaves: a home that you never lived in, but travel back to from time to time.
There is the front door, where you now stand. You see the circular table with the tall elongated lamp, and colorless rug. You retrace the steps of your ancestors, walking into the sitting area, the table decorated with paraphernalia your little hands don’t remember.
An old man sits by the window with a pair of spectacles perched on his nose and a newspaper in his hands. Reading.
You turn right and tiptoe past the window-box TV, where you and your sister once sat. Some part of you knows that the kitchen and dining room is to your left. You timidly lower your head as you enter the archway of the kitchen, bowing when you see the familiar face of God, umachi.
You see places where you darted beneath your father’s hands; corners where you watched your grandfather with the endless curiosity of a child; nicks in the wall where your tiny nails peeled the paint.
This is a memory you have never before experienced, but is familiar nonetheless.
Is this house even real? You ask yourself, or is it a quilt of memories stitched together?
Who knows.
Either way, as you stand there, surrounded by mist, you realize that in the becoming something has emerged, a grander sense of who you are now, and who you were before you could remember.
Spilled Ink 