Because something is gone, that doesn’t mean that it goes away. We often clutch at stories, real or those we imagine, that can help give our lives meaning against randomness and disorder.

You stood in our living room just after your first birthday as the television played aerial footage of prisoners in hazmat suits lowering caskets into mass graves. Mercifully, you’ll have no memory of it, but your early life unfolded as death felt just there, right outside the front door, delivered by a friend's fingertips, floating on a loved one’s breath.

Some cold nights the fog tinkles against the wind- / ows and shushes along the roof like a paper bag.

[T]he argument I’m making in the book is that by resisting the narrative of inevitability offered by Big Tech companies and their CEOs and investors, we might open ourselves up to other possibilities — maybe possibilities we haven’t even imagined yet…

I wait for an arrow quiver / strike to kill my aches / & when I look in the mirror / I want to throw knives

I spent my childhood practicing girlhood, / wearing dresses that flowed around my ankles, / and stuffing myself full of honey

I walk outside and above us an open mouth / to the universe – light streaming towards us, / an invitation.

“I think grief and loss were natural themes that emerged as I wrote. Since the American War in Vietnam is such a recent event, it touches every aspect of my characters and their story. In a sense, I couldn’t have written a novel about a Vietnamese American girl going to Vietnam without exploring the diasporic grief and these complex feelings related to home and belonging.”

Barbie and Ken aren’t together much these days. Ken is often with another doll he has met. Barbie knows this, too. You could not say that “the other” is taller, or slimmer, or more beautiful than Barbie. Barbie and her look alike, except for their hair color.

They pass the Styrofoam cups of potato salad laced with dill, and sometimes go for the banana pudding shingled with vanilla wafers. That is the point, the sharing. They’ve grown tired of individuating, making protective decisions, catering to specific tastes.

I am three days into a new life. In a new state in a new town at a new elevation where there are other things for single 30-year-olds to do than attend baby showers and bridal brunches. Three days into a new life and I am sitting on a beach waiting for a surf instructor, fantasizing about his abs and our potential.

A week later and the horse is a hollow shipwreck, ribcage bared to the quartermoon. The jetsam of carrion eaters strewn amidst a palimpsest of tracks printed in the dirt.

His mother’s doppelganger reached the water first. She did not break her stride. There was no fanfare, no grandiose gesture at the miracle of it all. She simply kept walking, her gait keeping its same rhythm as her feet set onto the shifting, slurping water as it rolled in and out.

News comes back your cancer has spread, / so we go out to celebrate / you not being dead / yet.

This is the great thing about immersing myself in the world I am creating in my work. The tropes, concepts, the culture and history, the places and characters, they all come together.

our feet seized by quicksand / as the ocean breathes in and out / in and out / like one great pneumonic lung

I could have gone to a bar; I could have skated down to the water and lit up and watched the lake waves. I could have rented a car and driven up to Caroline’s mother’s, banged on the door, refused to leave until Caroline came out. But soon I was standing in front of Cinema 17. The marquee listed one more showing.

I, alongside him, folded every napkin in the same direction. Nudged straight the faded carpet samples that made every cement step down to the basement a different frugal pattern and color. I wished our house number—off by only one digit—was a clean 12345.