Summers in Hong Kong always begin the same way. Puo puo[1] assembles the family in the top floor banquet hall of Hoi Gong Palace for a lavish reunion dinner.
Most summers are identical in routine. The reunion dinner passes by uneventfully and the rest of June is spent shopping at Causeway Bay[4] and lounging around my uncle’s flat. However, this summer’s monotony has been tempered by the air of loss. The dinner is both a celebration of the reunion of my extended family and a mourning of the loss of my grandfather to cancer. The conversation remains subdued as the empty chair next to my grandmother reminds us all of tomorrow’s funeral.

I look across the round table at my Puo puo, quiet and demure as she eats. For once, the air of regality that usually surrounds her dissipates.
When I was six years old, I visited Hong Kong for the first time. The bustle of the city entranced me immediately, a stark contrast from the quiet suburban landscape of my town. My aunt led me by the hand down a busy street in Tsim Sha Tsui[5], pointing at neon signs and pronouncing each glowing character to me with the careful patience of an elementary teacher.

My grandparents lived in Kowloon[6] at the time, before they moved into a nursing home closer to my aunt’s apartment. Visiting their cramped home always elicited complaints and grumbling from my mouth. I disliked the cloying scent of lilies that seemed to fill each square inch of space, the pervasive feeling of claustrophobia, the layer of dust that covered every item and person in the apartment. With a box of egg tarts in the crook of one elbow and my hand curled in the other, my mother would pull me up the narrow concrete steps to her parents’ apartment.
The drive to the funeral home takes one hour and two bus changes. I climb down the steps of the double-decker, clutching the plastic railing with both hands as the bus jerks back and forth on the uneven pavement. Out the doors of the bus, I follow my parents into the sea of people crossing the street. As natives to Hong Kong, my parents are experts at traversing crowds. They weave and bob through the mass like swordfish as I struggle to follow. Growing up in America has accustomed me to air-conditioned cars and quiet traffic. I feel my t-shirt stick to my back as the heat raises beads of sweat across my skin. Southeast Asia is famously humid. The skyscrapers around us act as umbrellas against the sun’s rays but do little to deter the hot muggy air.

Sandwiched between a bakery and an accounting firm is Jai Ngo Po Funeral Parlour and Crematorium, a narrow, condominium-like building. In Hong Kong, buildings are always more narrow than wide, a symptom of the city’s growing population and diminishing space.

The second floor of the funeral home is where the ceremony will occur. We take the elevator up and the metal door opens into a jade-and-gold decorated hallway with banner arches leading to smaller rooms. I follow my parents down the hallway to the room at the end, a medium sized enclave flanked by tall flower vases and decorated with a white gold banner across the top of the entrance. A picture of my grandfather with his name, Wong Yut Qiu, sits above one of the vases.

My relatives stand around outside the room, tapping their feet against the floor and surreptitiously glancing at their watches. “Ah, they’re here!” my aunt Cecelia exclaims at our arrival. Cecelia yi ma[7] grins widely as she grabs my arm and pulls me into a tight hug. A short and bubbly woman, she always likes to pinch my cheeks and lament how tall I’ve grown in her high-pitched voice whenever my family comes to visit.

An aged monk steps out from the room reserved for our ceremony. His voice, raspy yet whiny at the same time, rings out in the silent hall as he ushers us into the room.

The space is thick with the syrupy-sweet scent of burning incense. Grandfather's framed picture sits in a small altar box among tangerines and ceramic pots of incense sticks. Around the altar spills a vibrant cascade of life-sized paper sculptures. A red paper litter with miniature servants in embroidered silk robes form the backdrop of the room. A folded boat of tissue clothes and jewels floats over the tiled floor. The room is a paper microcosm of the afterlife. All of the items will be burned alongside my grandfather's body, to be taken with his soul to Heaven.

Vases of lilies and peonies from friends unable to make the ceremony fill the corners of the room. A plastic fold out table with black and white robes and a stack of shiny gold papers sits off to the side. My mother explains to me surreptitiously the preparations we must do.

Each member of the family will don a robe: black for those who believe in the ancient Chinese traditions and white for Christians and non-believers. My mother, father, and I are the only to wear the white robes, three bright figures in a crowd of black.
The glossy sheets next to the robes will be folded by us into gold boats that will be burned with the other paper items, symbolizing our familial contribution to my grandfather's wealth.

The Chinese love money. We are keen for our preparations, our philosophy of "work now, enjoy later". We hold onto our possessions and find ways to ensure continued prosperity even in death. Like the emperor who built a world from terra cotta, my family builds a world of paper for my grandfather and prays for his happiness in Heaven.

My mother holds me back from folding. "We are Christians," she admonishes, "We do not participate in these pagan rituals." I step back and watch the rest of the family fold boats. The paper structures pile up at the side of the table, crowded rows of shiny gold. I imagine my grandfather will be a rich man in the afterlife.

Puo puo sits at the corner of the table. The paper crinkles in her trembling hand as she makes neat, delicate creases, folding the flaps down along the curves of the boat. The world seems to speed by around her while she moves at a steady, silent pace.
 
In my freshman year of high school, I visited Hong Kong alone. Every summer before this, my parents were always with me, leading me down the streets, reminding me to greet my relatives, counting out the exact coins needed for bus fare.

That summer, they decided I needed to learn to live alone, to survive the bustle of Hong Kong a solitary traveler. I lived with my grandparents, in their lily-scented apartment, for those three months.

Most days were quiet, spent reading books or watching TV. I would buy groceries each afternoon and bring them back to cook for dinner. Sometimes, Puo puo would come along with me. My usually quick pace would be significantly reduced as I walked alongside my grandmother, her wrinkled hand curled around my elbow. At the store, we would amble by at the pace of tortoise as Puo puo would examine each and every aisle of food, pointing to the items she needed. We spoke rarely, the natural result of a language barrier. In those moments, I wished my Cantonese was better so I could understand her.
 
They burn my grandfather’s body at night in the crematorium in the basement of Jai Ngo Po, a room that stinks with smoke and incense. We stand in rows before the furnace, listening to the steady beat of a drum as we bow and pray and bow again.

The items our family diligently folded are burnt up with my grandfather, to be taken up with him to heaven. I watch the smoke of the furnace float up to the vents in the ceiling, like writhing snakes.

After the ceremony, we are back at Hoi Gong for dinner. I sit between my grandmother and my aunt, hunching my shoulders to avoid elbowing either of them.

At the end of the dinner, my grandmother pulls a red envelope, a hong bao[8], from her breast pocket and hands the heavy pack of New Year money to me.

I take the envelope from her, unsure of what to say. I stumble over my words, struggling to articulate my thanks. Puo puo only smiles and shakes her head.

The night passes as quickly as it begins. Another summer in Hong Kong.

As Paul Raffaele descended down the Ndeiram Kabur River, he wondered for the fifth time that day if he was making the right choice. His pirogue, a canoe constructed from strips of tree trunk, rocked back and forth in the murky water, jostled by the lull of the river currents. Mosquitoes buzzed around his ears, his forehead dotted with beads of sweat from the thick jungle humidity. For days he had trekked through the dense forests of Papua New Guinea in hopes of finding an elusive native tribe called the Korowai. His shoulders, aching from the strenuous rowing, sagged with relief as his guide, a slim Indonesian man, told him that they were close. Suddenly, shouts of alarm arose. Tribesmen crowded the riverbank, bows and arrows lifted in warning to the foreign intruders. As his guide shouted commands and reassured the traveling party, Raffaele’s heart rattled in his chest. He was about to meet the Korowai, allegedly one of the last remaining practicers of human cannibalism in the world.

In the days that past, Raffaele learned of the Korowai’s customs and practices, including their gruesome acts of endocannibalism-- consumption of the flesh of fellow tribesmen. With the help of translators, he spoke with Korowai, who explained the reason they ate human flesh. The tribe believed in evil spirits called khakhua that could possess fellow tribesmen. The possessed individuals were no longer human but demonic khakhua, thus the Korowai did not consider themselves cannibals when they killed and ate their possessed tribesmen.

From the perspective of the rest of the world, the Korowai tribe seem archaic and immoral. Their moral systems allow them to commit horrific acts of murder and cannibalism, major taboos in our society. Our society condemns both the Korowai and their practices, painting a picture of “good vs evil”, with ourselves portrayed as the “good” and any opposing viewpoints as the “evil”. However the issue is much more complex than can be described in simple terms of good and bad. Cultural and environmental differences play large roles in dictating behavior and character, both moral and immoral, and can allow us to better understand how our own values develop, necessitating the question: what biological and cultural factors make a person moral or immoral?

Nature vs Nurture
One of the greatest debates in the fields of psychology and philosophy regards the issue of nature versus nurture in dictating morality and behavior. Years of discussion argue varying perspectives on the source of morals, either from innate qualities or learned influences. Charles Darwin, proponent of the evolutionary theory and author of the Origin of Species, believed humans were born with a inherited sense of altruism, behavior characterized as selfless and kind. Darwin proposed that “morality was not contrary but fundamental to human nature” and consisted of altruistic characteristics, such as “empathy, social pleasure, [and] concern for the opinion of others” (Narvaez). In contrast, the successors and reformers of Darwin’s philosophy, the Neo-Darwinists, asserted the innate selfishness of humans, driven by animalistic biological instincts. Instead moral behavior was learned later in life, influenced solely by environment and culture. Modern theorists propose that neither side is wrong, but neither are they both right.

The Development of Morality
Modern studies have substantiated the belief that humans are born with a basic set of moral codes, rules that consider sins like murder and rape taboo and warn against lying and cheating. The presence of an innate sense of morality has found support in the field of genetics where a recent study has discovered a correlation between serotonin levels and ethical choices. Serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with regulating mood and social behavior, is believed to contribute to feelings of happiness. After serotonin is released by the human brain to perform certain functions, it is reabsorbed by chemical transporters in a process known as reuptake. Natural variation in amount of serotonin reuptake exists in humans, controlled by a chemical promoter that comes in two forms: long (L), associated with normal levels of reuptake, and short (S), causing lower levels of reuptake. Test subjects with both long and short forms of the gene were asked versions of a moral dilemma, the first involving a morally neutral scenario and the second involving foreseen harm (Wilcox).

The study found that, when asked the question involving foreseen harm, test subjects with the short form of the promoter gene were less likely to answer questions with a response that involved harming someone while subjects with the long form of the gene were more willing to give responses to harm individuals for the sake of a majority (Wilcox). The experiment allowed scientists to find a connection between moral decisions and the human genome, implicating a correlation between increased serotonin production and more developed morals. The presence of a “moral gene” can therefore explain slight variations in morality between individuals in simplistic terms. As humans we are born with slight genetic influences on our ethical mindsets. While the “moral gene” in question is only responsible for minor variations, its presence proves that a sense of right and wrong is true to all humans at their core, albeit at varying degrees.

In addition to an innate moral sense, humans are born with biological survival instincts that give us the capacity to be selfish and harm others for our own wellbeing. To protect our own survival, our instincts motivate us to act selfishly, stealing, lying, and hurting others to obtain our isolated happiness and satisfaction. Therefore humans can be understood to possess two warring sides of moral and immoral, a “line dividing good and evil [that] cuts through the heart of every human being” (qtd. in Wilcox). The influence of a “moral gene” and base biological instincts have limited effect on human behavior, restricted to simplistic terms of good and evil. The world, however, is filled with much more complex variations in morality than simply good vs evil. Thus, to understand the deeper complexities of morality, one must look at external influences.

Cultural Influences
The final component of morality, and arguably the most compelling, is environment. While we are born with basic moral inclinations, the environment we are raised in substantially impacts how we behave later in life and shapes our ethical makeup. Studies in the behavior and upbringing of infants have found that the culture an infant is born into has a major influence on their in-group and out-group biases. Babies show bias for their in-groups, the culture or community they are born in, preferring to look at female faces if “raised by a woman… [and] if it is raised by a man, it prefers looking at a male face” (Smith). These biases affect the child’s later behavior, potentially developing prejudiced or discriminant beliefs against out-groups.

The environment one is raised in and persists in throughout adolescent development plays a major role in forming moral beliefs and behavioral tendencies. Humans by nature are “dynamic systems whose early experiences shape their dispositions and capacities”, affected by the circumstances and atmosphere of their upbringing (Christen). Culture plays a compelling role in diversifying morality, acting as a both a potential catalyst and inhibitor for ethical growth. The role of environment in the development of ethical inclinations explains the wide variations in morality and immorality in the world.

The in-group and out-group biases one develop from a young age lead to increased cultural polarity which in turn is passed from generation to generation, widening the gap in mindsets and behavior between groups. In the connected information era of today, the gap is slowly decreasing, the world increasingly becoming more united under a shared moral code. However, for isolated tribes like the Korowai who have little to no contact with foreigners, disparities in morality have grown to dramatic proportions. The influence of culture and environment have resulted in wide variations in ethical mindsets between the Korowai and the rest of the world.

Implications on Society
Morality is not rigid standard of behavior upon which all humanity must evaluate themselves against. Morality is both malleable and relative, to an extent. While basic biological and genetic values exist within us, cultural influences play a major role in introducing minute variation, disparities that grow with distance and isolation. Both culture and biology dictate the ethical bounds of a human being, acting not as separate entities but reconcilable concepts intertwined with each other.

Understanding the role both our biology and our environment play in influencing our morals prevents us from forming harsh assumptions of superiority, becoming complacent with our own flaws, and convinced that our values place us at a superior standing to foreign societies. Instead, by considering the environmental influences of those of opposing moral standpoint, we more patiently assess varying points of view and evaluate the environmental influences on our own morals. Acknowledging the cultural influences in our lives allows us to not only analyze the flaws of ourselves and our culture but transcend the prejudices of our social surroundings, understanding on a deeper level the behavior and inclinations of those of different moral standing.

When Raffaele ventured into the jungle of Papua New Guinea, in search of a cannibalistic tribe, he understood the extreme disparities in methodology between himself the Korowai. Despite the enormous differences between them, despite the immoral practices of the isolated tribe, he understood the malleable nature of morality and the strong influences of culture and environment. He understood that, ultimately, both he and the Korowai were human beings, only on differing paths of cultural development. The Korowai’s isolated nature led them to their practices and mindsets today. Perhaps, Raffaele surmised, “Had we been isolated in clans in rain forests we'd be the same. The human brain is the human brain.”

 
Stewart
 
The first time I switch bodies, I wake up in the back of a Honda Civic on a stained car seat the color of an egg carton. There is a dark stain on the front of my pants and the wobbly feeling of post-orgasm in my legs, even though I haven’t seen another human being in weeks.
 
Entering another person’s body has a distinct feeling of intrusion, like sneezing in the middle of a funeral or attending a party underdressed. It leaves behind an oily sheen and a cloying taste in my mouth that makes me smack my lips and wish I had mouthwash.
 
I come to knowing exactly whose body I am inhabiting. I am an accountant. I am 42 years old. My name is Stewart Libet. The T is silent. I am wearing an oversized suit and my scraggly thin hair is combed over to one side. I am cheating on my wife.
 
I cannot decide whether to use I or He. Part of me wants to dissociate my consciousness from Stewart and his affair. Another part of me understands the inner workings of this body to the extent that I don’t feel completely me, like I’m in a weird limbo between someone else and myself.
 
Sections of my brain have been replaced with sections of Stewart. I possess intimate knowledge and wants of things I shouldn’t. His first kiss. What he had for breakfast the day before. The color of his favorite pair of boxers. A desire for chicken and waffles even though the real me prefers pancakes.
 
A voice drifts in from outside the car, distinctly female and high-pitched. She says something about having fun last night. I wrack my brain for some memory, but nothing comes up. I can’t tell if this is because I’m not Stewart or if Stewart doesn’t remember either.
 
A petite blonde woman with an hourglass figure wrapped up in a sheer black dress opens the car door and smiles at me. There’s lip gloss on her teeth. I smile back.
 
“You know, Stewart, your whole businessman vibe doesn’t show it, but you’re a real party animal. I cannot believe last night.”
 
I clear my throat. “Um yeah, I had fun…” I search my mind frantically. “...Jessica?”
 
She glares at me. “It’s Jennifer.”
 
I smile back sheepishly. She rolls her eyes and throws me a roll of toilet paper, telling me to clean myself up before I leave.
 
I rub away the dried semen inside my pants and wonder if this is what the rest of my life will be. Am I Stewart now? Is Stewart me? I hope not. I don’t want him to ruin my life like he’s seemed to ruin his own.
 
Jennifer throws me a twenty-dollar bill and leaves me on the side of the road. The tires of her Honda Civic creak noisily as she drives away.
 
I fall asleep hungry and alone on a park bench.
   
Ruth
 
The second time I switch bodies, I wake up in a bed.
 
Ruth Morrison wakes up at 6 am before her alarm rings. She presses cold spoons to the swollen skin under her eyes, does five push-ups on her pink yoga mat, and takes a hot shower. Ruth lives on a routine.
 
I smile at the doorman of the apartment complex as I leave. Acting on autopilot, my body takes me to a cafe across the street. I order a decaf latte with foam instinctively. The barista asks me for my name, and I say Ruth without hesitation. The name flows easily off my tongue like a song. Ruth Morrison. 23 years old. Happy, healthy, uninhibited.
 
Ruth Morrison smiles at strangers and works at an architectural firm. She wears her straight brown hair in a ponytail and doesn’t need glasses. I decide that if this is my new life, I am fine with it.
 
On the way home from work, I get a phone call. The contact name says Bill with a heart. I think I knew a Bill in my real life. He helped me paint my fence white when I moved. Did he have brown hair or black hair? I don’t remember.
 
The voice over the phone, Bill, tells me he’s in town and wants to come over. I feel hopeful. Bill is someone good, I tell myself. He makes me happy.
 
Back home, I clean my apartment for Bill. I throw away leftover pizza and arrange the beer bottles in my fridge in neat rows. I don’t drink, but I keep it stocked for him. I let my hair down and wear shiny blue teardrop earrings. I feel overdressed in my own home, but I know how Bill likes it. My dress is tight around my hips. I don’t put on underwear.
 
Later that night when I’m nursing my second beer and Bill still hasn’t shown up, I fall asleep on my couch and dream about another life.
Salome
 
Salome Guerra reminds me of someone I used to know. Someone from my real life. Sometimes I forget I used to have a life, used to be a person of my own and not a traveler walking each day in a different person’s shoes.
 
I like to say my real life is on pause. Not finished, not over, just quietly on vacation. It’s an idyllic way of thinking.
 
Salome reminds me of a girl I knew. The way she smiles, quiet and mouse like, the thick rimmed glasses she wears, the dimple on her left cheek. I can’t remember who the girl is, but I know she was someone important to me, someone I liked and spent time with. I try not to feel worried that I’m starting to forget myself.
 
Salome is happily pregnant with twins. I spend the day reading baby books and daydreaming about tiny shoes. My husband kisses me on the forehead when he comes home from work. He rubs my swollen ankles as we lounge on the couch and listens to me gush about shades of yellow for the nursery room.
 
It’s not the first time I wish I could stay. I wish I could inhabit Salome’s life forever, until I became her, until I was the one happy and pregnant, falling asleep next to my husband and waking up in her bed every day.
   
Jae-woo
 
In my fourth life, I am almost discovered.
 
Park Jae-woo is a handsome Korean actor living in Gangnam, Seoul. It is my first time entreating on the life of a celebrity.
 
Jae-woo’s manager looks me over with narrowed eyes and a single perfectly arched eyebrow. She is a tall, proud woman named Min Yeong-mi with grey streaks in her jet-black hair and a thin rhinoplasty-esque nose. She crosses her arms over her chest and scoffs at my shoes.
 
“The real Park Jae-woo would never wear Venetians with these pants, so who are you?”
 
I stare at her, mouth agape, before laughing loudly and awkwardly and stepping past her rigid figure. She glares at me with beady eyes as I retreat.
 
I spend the rest of the day on edge, distinctly aware of each of my limbs and every movement I make. My shoulders ache from how tensely I stand as I greet interviewers and struggle with honorifics.
 
I quickly learn that Jae-woo’s favorite food is mung bean paste cakes when I pass by a bakery and find myself unable to look away from the displayed desserts. On a whim, I buy two, one for myself and one for Min Yeong-mi. She stares at the offered pastry before smiling. I have won her over and convinced her of my ruse.
 
The smile lights up my insides like the center of a hot stove. Behind a veil of innocent smiles and winks swims a nauseating mix of lust and infatuation. Min Yeong-mi combs her fingers through my hair, and I feel myself stiffen in my trousers.
 
That night, I fall asleep in an empty apartment too large for one person.
   
Fatima
 
Fatima Adwan writes science fiction novels about space pirates and drinks endless cups of cold brew coffee. I decide to write a message for her to read after I leave her body. The message begins small but quickly blooms into a full-blown novel about every life I’ve ever inhabited. It is my first time revealing this secret, even in an indirect way, and I can feel my heartbeat quicken with excitement.
 
I write about each of my lives in excruciating detail, explaining each and every feeling and nuance I discovered in my bodies. When I finally finish, I realize I did not write a single word about my old life.
 
I don’t remember my real name anymore. Sometimes I see people with familiar faces, and I wonder if I knew them. I wonder if this person was a friend or an enemy or a lover. I craft a story about them, meeting them, talking to them, waking up beside them. It is difficult to envision myself in these stories.
 
Was I a man or a woman or neither or someone in-between? Was I married? Widowed? Lonely?
 
I remember Stewart and Ruth and Salome and Jae-woo and Fatima and Philip and Michael and every life I’ve ever lived except for my own.
 
Did I even have a life before I became these people?
 
Some days all I can do is lie in bed and wait for my time as one person to end and my time as another to begin. On those days, I feel myself retreat into my body, utterly consumed by a desire to return to a place I never knew. Every time, I fall asleep and when I wake up, I am different. Physically different, obviously, but mentally different as well. Soulfully different. Each day, my skin-walking alarms me less and less.
 
Each life I live takes a piece of me and in return gives a piece of its own. My existence has become a collection of experiences, of numbered faces. I am not a single life, and I am not all of them.
 
Sometimes the only thing I can hold onto is the perpetuity of my own consciousness. But even that will change one day.
 
One day I will become someone completely different, both in mind and body, from the person I was the day before. And one day, I will cross a thin line of existence between life and death. I will exist and the next day I will not.

 
When I was young, when my father still lived with us and my family was whole and complete, my mother used to tell me stories at night. She told me the stories her mother used to tell her, old Chinese myths about talking ravens and monstrous serpents that didn’t exist in books and could only be found in spoken words and memories. The stories themselves I don’t remember very well, but I remember how my mother would sit at the edge of my bed, shaping words in the air.
 
Her eyes would shine so brightly as she spoke, filling up the darkness of my bedroom with a serene glow.
   
My mother is angry with me again.
 
She shouts from across the room, her voice loud enough to penetrate the thick plastic of my headphones.
 
She likes to use sweetly accented English with the white neighbors next door, but with me, she always speaks in Cantonese. The words are harsh and callous on her tongue like the tiny spiked brambles that stick to my socks when I walk through a grassy lawn.
 
She’s yelling about school, her cheeks red with anger and her thin eyebrows furrowed against the wrinkled gait of her forehead. She resembles a reptilian dragon with columns of fire spewing from her open mouth.
 
My mother clutches a paper in her clenched fists like the handle of a samurai sword, a test from two days ago, my slanted chicken scratch handwriting filling up the crumpled sheet and at the top, a round 65 in sticky red pen.
 
I rub at my wrist, a nervous habit, kneading the skin around bony joints where an inky black raven glides down my hand, around my veins and against the bump of my pulse. The tattoo, an impulsive decision, is a particular vexation to my mother. It reminds her of my father who wore tattoos like a second skin, filling up his arms with bruised greens and mottled reds.
 
Suddenly, my mother rips the headphones off of my head, throwing them to the ground where I hear them break with a tiny snap. My fingers twitch.
 
“When I talk to you, you listen!” she shouts into my ear, thrusting my failed test into my face. She throws accusations, cutting scars into my cheek. I don’t answer. My words stick to the back of my throat.
 
My mother’s shouts fill the periphery of my thoughts, an incessant white noise that buzzes noisily like a nest of hornets. The ink on my wrist aches.
 
Abruptly, I stand up. My mother watches in confusion as I walk to the door. “Hey!” she yells after me, “Where do you think you are you going?”
 
I slam the door behind me.
   
Outside is cold, winter fading away but still there enough to raise goosebumps on my bare arms. I rub my pebbly skin. My thick black coat is sitting on my bed where I left it but my pride stops me from going inside to get it.
 
The gate enclosing our apartment complex creaks as I close it. Outside of the complex, the sidewalks end, and I walk on the wet grass next to the road where cars rush past.
 
I pass an intersection, filled with the thick noise of traffic, down the road to a row of stores. The plastic fluorescence of a convenience store casts greenish yellow light on my face.
 
Sandwiched between the graying concrete of two stores is a narrow alleyway. I squeeze down the corridor, holding my breath against the stench of rotting trash and decayed plastic, reaching the end to a rusted metal grate.
 
The metal stains my fingertips brown as I pry the sheet open and crawl through to climb up the stairs behind it. At the top of the stairs, past walls lined with yellowed movie posters, is the dim gray light of a room.
 
The room is nothing more than a small concrete box, 100 square feet enclosed by walls covered with peeling wallpaper and tattered posters, and filling every inch are bookshelves.
 
Crumbling books, pages torn and covers split at their seams, spill over the shelves. I pull a book out of the tiny space it fills sandwiched between a dictionary and a romance novel, my fingertips leaving indents in the thick sheet of dust blanketed over the book.
 
Inside its pages are sheets of script, Chinese characters running down the matted paper like trails of ants.
 
The words are unknown to me, words I maybe once knew but quickly forgot in the heat of American summers and English chapter books.
 
I recognize the word hong, red. I see ngo and nei, I and you. I string together letters like finding words in a word-search puzzle.
 
Closing my eyes, I envision my mother next to my bed, her eyes shining brightly. The mother in my dreams whispers instead of shouts, speaks in stories and songs instead of anger and dust.
 
She kisses my father’s cheek, his arms bare and empty of tattoos, and waves goodbye to him and there is no doubt in my mind that he will return.
 
In my dream, perfect Cantonese flows from my mouth and my head, my mother’s stories intact and whole in the recesses of my brain.
 
My dreams are nothing like reality, where home is quiet dinners and stewing silence, where my mother leaves in the morning before me and comes back with new wrinkles on her face and a creak in her voice.
 
Reality is the raven tattoo on my hand, the only remnant of my mother’s stories that quickly dried up after my father left.
 
I rub at my wrist. The ink of the raven seems to flicker.
 
I rub harder, smearing black across my hand.
 
I rub and rub until the raven disappears and my skin is nothing but the color of dust.

 
His hands are as delicate as the wilted lily spilling over my mother’s vase.
 
I dream about the texture of his palm, a whisper thin trickle curled around my rotund coarseness, the rhythm of our pulses syncing together like two ticking clocks. His fingers are spidery and thin with knots protruding between each joint. I feel each digit reach far into me into untouched crevices and unmarked soil. He presses into every inch of my skin and leaves prints on the inner fat of my thighs.
 
I love his shoulders. The hollows of his collar bone. The creases across his chest between each rib. He is skinnier than a spine. If I squeeze too hard, I imagine I’ll snap him apart like a twig. He doesn’t make me feel dainty or delicate. He makes me feel like the man my father wants me to be. I want to possess him entirely.
 
Three days after his family moves into the house next door, I learn his name is Isaac. Their moving truck can barely fit into the narrow driveway, and for two hours, I watch a steady stream of people carry boxes to the house from my seat on the porch.
 
His sister is a foot taller than him, model-like, thin and slender like the curve of a pale white swan. She wears a ring on every other finger and keeps her hair tied up into a neat tight ponytail.
 
Isaac is a delicate 5 feet 3 inches. He reclines in the shadow of his sister’s charisma, painfully shy, quiet, beautiful in a misshapen sort of way. A starry-night sky of freckles spills over his cheeks, chin, the bridge of his nose, and his neck. I imagine they trickle down his chest to kiss the pebbles of his nipples.
 
I run outside every morning.
 
I run for hours until my skin smells like sweat and musk, like the sticky underside of a rotten peach. I jog past their house six times in a single hour. Sometimes the mottled brown curtain upstairs shifts slightly, and I wonder if he can see me. Does he notice me like I notice him?
 
I pass the house again until Diane from across the street comes out to ask what I’m doing. I only shrug my shoulders, and she mutters something about weird kids and this generation before going back inside. I retreat to my room after that and watch from my window. If I crane my head from the corner of my room, I can just barely see the ugly pale curtain. My breath catches in my throat every time it shifts.
 
Two days later, Isaac comes over with a pie.
 
He knocks three times before I open the door, almost slamming it shut in his face when I see him. He holds the pastry out in front of him with a shy smile, offering it like a trophy.
 
The tip of his thumb sinks into the edge of the tin, viscous purple oozing out of the hole left behind. I feel my throat dry up as I take the pie from him. His smile makes my chest ache.
 
When I was little, I used to cry after I masturbated.
 
I would bring myself to completion and then lie on my bed, grieving my own conscience. I prayed for hours for forgiveness from God.
 
Now, I don’t feel guilty anymore. I touch myself to the image of Isaac’s thumb sinking into the edge of the pie. After I come, my body sinks into my mattress like a dead fish.
 
Sometimes, I see Isaac outside on my runs. He smiles at me when I pass him. My heart flutters its wings like a sparrow in my rib cage. I want to rip open my chest and let it out, let the sparrow free into the sky. Isaac passes, and I cannot breathe. His grip on my throat is tight and unforgiving. I imagine I look like a fish gaping after him, big and dumb.
 
Summer ends as quickly as it started. One second I’m napping in the warm thick of the sun, and the next, I’m bundling into a hoodie jacket and waking up at 6 am for football practice.
 
Isaac is a junior, a grade below me. I spend each minute in school distinctly aware of his position respective to my own. Between Chemistry and English, we pass each other in the hallway. He waves, and I stutter out a stilted Hi. I’m not used to words escaping me, to losing my voice. I am not shy, but Isaac makes me painfully quiet.
 
He sits with a small group of other juniors during lunch. I sit with the football players two tables away. I have strategically chosen the seat adjacent to his, so I can watch him out of the corner of my eye without facing him directly. Thomas hollers about last night’s game, about his girlfriend who won’t put out, about Mr. Walker’s tests, and I watch Isaac pick at his mashed peas. He catches my stare from across the cafeteria and smiles around a fork full of food.
   
Practice ends at 5 every day. We run laps, practice plays, listen to the incessant beration of our pot-bellied coach, ending every day sweaty and hot. I have never noticed the naked bodies of my fellow teammates in the locker room, but today, I let my eyes stray. I take in shades of glistening skin, taut muscles, hairy limbs, thick columns of meat. Nothing about these men pulls me in like Isaac. Isaac is a delicate, wobbly legged doe. These men are boars, oxen, broad-shouldered giants. I look down at myself, at the thick, uncut hairiness of my length, and imagine what Isaac would look next to me.
 
I see him the next day in art. Apparently, a scheduling mishap had placed him in the wrong class and now the mistake has been corrected and his rightful place is in Mrs. Eason’s fifth period. With me.
 
He sees me from across the room, his whole face lighting up as he waves. I ignore him, but he plops his stuff on the empty seat next to mine anyways. No matter how hard I try I cannot avoid the gaze of his smile from the corner of my eye.
 
Mrs. Eason instructs us to paint an animal. Isaac pulls out a watercolor palette and a sketchbook, dipping his brush into shades of blue and violet as he strokes the gentle wings of a peacock.
 
I paint a deer, wide eyed and trembling. I imagine running my hands down the slender back of the deer. I imagine staring into dark hooded eyes, moving my gaze across freckled skin and delicate collar bones. I feel myself swell in my shorts as I paint, and my face reddens with embarrassment.
 
The painting is unsurprisingly ugly, and I throw it away after class. Isaac insists on keeping it, but I couldn’t handle him having it, knowing what I thought as I painted it. Once again, I cannot ignore his smile.
 
I start to see him everywhere. Do I follow him everywhere or does he follow me? He sits in the bleachers during football practice sometimes. Those days are either my best or worst practices. I run at 8 am every Saturday morning. I start to see him on these runs, even though it's freezing, even though his shoulders shake from the cold. We encircle each other. Two orbiting planets. Two hollow rocks hurtling through the emptiness of space.
 
It comes to a head at the game.
 
The homecoming game is the weekend before the dance. The cafeteria is decorated, limp painted banners hanging from walls, streamers across doorways, balloons hanging from the ceiling. We practice to the sound of the cheerleaders, ra-ra-ra-ing as they shake their pom-poms and launch themselves into contorted formations. I know without even asking that Isaac will be at the game.
 
The game goes by in a flash. All I can see is Isaac, a single face among a sea of others. We win, a moving sense of elation enveloping the team. I feel the glee and happiness and satisfaction wash over me and bask in the victory.
 
He finds me afterwards, smiling wide and innocent like a crescent moon. He gushes about the win, pressing himself up to my chest, and I feel the gentle vibration of his heartbeat against my own. A drop of sweat trickles down my nose and drips onto his cheek, and I resist the urge to wipe it off a glistening freckle. He looks up at me, wide eyed, before tugging on my sweat-soaked shirt.
 
I let myself be pulled along as he moves us to the school, his eyes darting here and there as he leads me to an empty hallway. “Isaac--” I whisper.
 
Suddenly, he kisses me. Surges up on tip toes and fills my mouth with the inky warm cavern of his own. I kiss back. I push against him, shove him up against a locker, swallow quiet whimpers and groans.
 
Oh, I think, he’s kissing me. I can almost see myself, outside of my own body looking at the scene before me. My body seems to engulf his, big and broad around spindly thin limbs. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Should I keep them by my side or let them do what they want, tug on his hair, curl around his waist?
 
Before I decide, he pulls away, a string of spit connecting our lips. He’s smiling so widely, a half-dazed look on his face. “Do--do you want to…” he trails off and gestures to the door.
 
It’s when his head is turned that I notice it. There are bruises on his neck. I know I didn’t leave them there, didn’t go anywhere near his neck.
 
“Where are these from?” I ask.
 
Isaac looks confused at first, but when he realizes what I’m gesturing to, he giggles. “Sorry, I usually cover those up. You know how guys can get.”
 
He says it nonchalantly, as if it’s just another remark. Yes, I like sugar with my coffee. Yes, I let men touch me and fuck me. It’s almost funny how abrupt my image of him curls up and distorts, like the surface of a lake broken by a thrown pebble.
 
I want to vomit. I feel anger rise up in my throat, a boiling, bubbling venom. I want to kill him, to hurt him. So I do.
 
I punch him. I throw my fist back and slam it into his jaw, hear the crunch of bone against bone. My knuckles ache with the force of the hit. Isaac reels back and collapses on the ground, clutching his chin with his hands. He looks up at me, his eyes big and watery like two round moons, his hands covering his mouth where red peeks out between spidery thin fingers. I watch the blood seep down his shirt, a dripping spill of red that spreads across white cotton. I watch little drops of blood hit the linoleum next to his feet and then on his feet, red staining his sneakers.
 
He doesn’t cry, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t ask a single question. He just stands up and runs. He sprints down the hallway as fast as he can. I watch his retreating back, growing smaller and smaller as he runs.
 
He sways like a leaf in the wind, a single wobbly shape of white and red. A deer crashing through the brush.

Chinatown

the street is dirt enough
to rattle the wheels of our car

cigarette stench and exhaust on a
vehicular stretch of jungle
100 feet of concrete
that never rests

jumps under my sneakers
under black stilettos
and rubber boot soles

restaurants
and run-down grocery stores
next to a shiny new H-mart

milk tea bodegas
and dim sum joints

barber shops
their cacophony of blow dryers

grocers of herbs and roots
the acrid bite of ferment

laundry list families
gathered around circle banquet tables

a village of collective loves
of cultural yarn
and feverish nights

neon signs
glowing glass

a town that never sleeps
and is more alive in the peaky hours
of single-digit AM

town of Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam
and is still called

Chinatown

Dear Me of May 30, 2019,

You are standing on the delicate edge of a precipice. Behind you is the comfortable person you have masqueraded as your entire life. In front of you is the valley of who you will soon become. You do not know that you are about to fall. You are walking blindfolded towards this precipice, this sudden drop. You do not know what will happen to you.

I never understood how much a summer can change someone until now. There were parts of myself that previously seemed inseparable from my consciousness and now no longer exist. 

Or maybe they have not completely vanished but instead shifted ever so slightly to the right and opened up minute crevasses between the folds of my brain. I have filled these empty spaces with new things, new wants. A desire to follow my dreams. A love for the people close to me. A need for something greater.

You, the Me of the past, are confused.

You want something you don't really need. Your fear of instability restricts you from pursuing your dreams. You care about meaningless things and forget the things that really matter.

I don't blame you. I was you. I fed your fears and anxieties. I indulged your pride. I stoked the flames of your unrest. I incited chaos in your spirit.

You have a goal, an overarching ideal. You want to be special. You want to be loved. You want to suffocate half of yourself, the half that matters, to be the person you see on your screen. Your idea of the world surrounds a fragile ego, grounded in letter grades and 100-point scales. You hide your stomach. You cover your eyes with your hair. You pick at your skin and wish you were taller. You dissect yourself, pull your features apart limb from limb like detangling strings of cotton candy. You are trapped in your own brain, lost in a nest of anxieties and fears.

I want to set you free. I want to burn your books, destroy your house, and leave you utterly defenseless. I want you to restart yourself. Kill the facade you built up your whole life and fill your empty shell with things that matter.

I want to kiss you. I want you to love someone. I want you to take more pictures of yourself, text people more, say I love you more, eat more food, spend more money, wear shorter shorts, wear big dangly earrings, paint your nails, do the things you would do if no one else was looking. I want you to cut your hair short and dye it blue and wear sparkly hair clips and smear pink eyeshadow on your eyelids.

I want you to laugh with your mouth open. Do you notice you cover your mouth a lot? You’re ashamed of the way you laugh with a mouth full of braces, ashamed to spit, to be too loud, to enjoy things too much. I want you to laugh until you’re crying, to spit on the people that tell you to be quiet. I want you to be someone. Right now, you are a paper doll girl. Swathed by a sea of black, swallowed-up, consumed by the disorder in your rib cage. You are drowning.

I pity you. I swim in sympathy. I tear up for you. I used to wear your face and read your lines. I encompassed myself with your clothes and retreated into your skin.

At some point, I left your body and entered my own. Outwardly, we look exactly the same. Same short black hair, same big eyes, same half-smile, same fingers. 

Inwardly, we look almost the same. Our skeletal systems bare identical notches, the same creases in our bones. Our lungs breathe from the same pools of air. Our hearts beat at the same rhythm. 

But, my blood swims with a different flow. My pulse throbs at a higher cadence, skips beats and teeters back and forth like a vibrating cajon. My nervous system thrums with a stronger electrical current. I smile more, laugh louder, talk more, enjoy myself more.

My mind dreams in a higher state of being. I am happy and delicately anxious about the future but not overwhelmed. I am safe in my own skin. I have no desire to retreat.

I am afraid but not overcome. I do not know who I will be tomorrow, but I know who I am today.

Dear Me of the past, I am praying for you. I pray for you even though I know what you will become. The fall you are about take is more than a stumble. You will wrestle with yourself for months. You will continue wrestling. The valley below you seems deep and inconsolable. All you need to do is jump.

With love,
Me of September 14, 2019

I am bilingual. 

Sort of. 

I never learned the kind of languages teenagers usually learn in highschool, my tongue untrained to the rolling r’s of Spanish or the rigid tones of Mandarin Chinese, but I did learn a different kind of language, one not taught in an 11th grade classroom or a course on Rosetta Stone. A language found not in spoken words or dialogue but in the unspoken, the silent recesses between a phrase, the quiet of an empty room.

I learned the language of mitigation, the art of alleviating a short temper and diffusing a fight.

I began my perfection of this craft in 7th grade when my parents separated, my father lost his job, and we moved from a one story house to a tiny, 3 room prison cell of an apartment on 36th Magnolia Street. 

In my new home, there was ample opportunity to practice my new language. 

Every night my father would return home at unholy hours, the stench of alcohol clinging to him like Saran wrap. 

Every night I would learn when to speak and when to stay silent. 

I learned how to navigate an unspoken conversation and interpret the furrows of brows. To know when the moment was right to answer and when talking back meant a cuff on the cheek. Whether the pause between my father’s words meant a moment of contemplation or the quiet before an eruption.

I anticipated emotions and mediated my way through angry spells, dodging insults and retorts like Neo in Matrix. I was the Olympic fencer of conversation, ready to deflect, to parry, to block. Ready to take a hit and absorb the pain.

Of course I didn’t just learn words, I learned actions. I discovered the key hours of the night where my father’s snores drowned out my shallow footsteps to the kitchen to sneak a Cliff bar into my room for dinner. I uncovered the secrets of the carpet floors of my apartment, which parts of the ground were thick and padded and which were thin and made creaking noises when I stepped on them.

Growing up in the crooked cubicle of my apartment, every second, conversation, every step I took was like walking across a frozen lake, cracks in the ice spiralling in tendrils.

As my father came home from his job, my interpretive prowess began their work. Tirelessly I translated the sounds and actions I heard.

The sound of a slammed door rattling the crooked picture frames on the wall meant “I lost money at Poker.” 

Stumbling over the placemat and tripping over my sneakers next to the door meant “I didn’t get enough sleep last night”.

The clink of a glass bottle and slow mumbling under the breath meant “I went to the bar and got drunk”.

All three of them combined meant “hide”.

The most important lesson I learned in my language of mitigation was when to stay silent and hidden, when to listen quietly and wait for the angry shouts and pacing outside my locked bedroom door to fade.

Even though this language I know speaks no words, there are stories to be told. 

Stories in the stashes of food underneath my bed. Stories in the bruises on my forearms and under my left eye. Stories in the way I flinch when someone raises a hand, when someone comes too close for comfort.

This language I know may be unspoken, but I’ve learned there’s nothing louder than silence.