Carbon Copy

by Lauryn K.

College applications are brutal. We pour everything into compiling our entire lives into essays and lists that someone will look at for a matter of minutes. Comparison is inevitable and crushing. At a certain point, I started feeling like a carbon copy of every Asian girl in the country. The bubble I was living in popped and I couldn’t help dwelling on the fact that there were countless people who I’ve lived parallel lives with. I was always a good student, yet next to hundreds of thousands of other applicants, I felt like a fly.

As we all know, Asian households have a penchant for eliciting excellence. Both through myself, and through my friends, I’ve seen what this process of trying to conform to the mold of a perfect college applicant can do to a person. And despite reassurances of “oh, there is only one you” or “you are unique and special,” sometimes, these platitudes just can’t combat this feeling-- that sinking feeling of being insignificant and believing that there are a million mirror images of you.

Everyone has different ways of coping, and for me, art has always been my outlet when words escape me. The cathartic process of illustration allows me to address mental stressors like these while sharing my sentiments with others, often leading me to realize that I am, in fact, not alone.

We are running side by side, Popo

Down the river path of orange muskmelon and flaming grapefruit, adorned with pearl necklaces of tang yuan, to the mountains of nian gao. Back in my chair, back sitting across from you, back celebrating Chun Jie at your house I’ve always thought the branches outside your kitchen window look like faces, peering in, from stinging night air, at our family

Tell me, Popo, why do these foods mean togetherness, but when squeezed between auntie and uncle, I am alone? Tell me, why as mouths close around this feast, the words out of those mouths aren’t the ones I need to hear? Tell me, “how are you doing?” and I will grasp onto the ‘er’ “Climbing higher, pushing further, working harder.” These questions don’t really want an answer.

Shouldering a load of ‘musts,’ I struggle through hard country, looking for the path, the one this family has trod on through generations Blind I am, I can only tumble down twisting slopes Let the brambles cut into my body, I will swipe through with arms inked bloody. When I emerge on the other side– I am lost. I live on the side paths. My home is the bathroom stall I don’t squeeze in, counting to ten, drowning in the air. Late at night, I don’t spend time unable to journal, hands too shaky to write

When doors slammed in the pandemic, when features of those who shared my face became symptoms, when I watched my people lying abandoned, puppets on the news, characters in a larger narrative, when I lay dead alongside them in my bed, tell me they do not exist

Remember that word spray-painted across the wall-ball courts of my elementary school. That word was quickly power washed away, one more stain on the old schoolyard, but that feeling of my playground violated remained. That word never disappeared, but tell me, my feelings do not exist.

Tell me again how you came to the US, my age, my twin. Recount your story so I picture myself. Tell me how we were sent to school with a sign slapped on our backs, “warning: does not speak English.” But don’t tell me, “animal in a zoo, handle with care.” A caution to people gawking. Tell me instead how we shortened our name to something more comfortable for strange lips Don’t tell me the power your name held for you. How erasing it stole ownership of your identity. Tell me rather of a strong mother, who held her husband, her 11 year old daughter when their sister, daughter was lost. But never tell me of losing your baby, of grieving, of breaking. Because there should be nothing to tell

Even with your surgery, one supposed to render you bedridden, you prepared this meal for us Even in your recovery, you must press on, crawling on your knees.

Because we’re full and complete.

Even with your surgery, one supposed to render you bedridden, you prepared this meal for us. Even in your recovery, you must press on, crawling on your knees.

Because we’re full and complete.

We’re humble and grateful.

We’re hard-working and assured.

We’re excited for tomorrow and excited about yesterday and today

Say I am recovering,

Say I am improving,

Say I am feeling better,

Say I am feeling nothing.

I am nothing.

I look up. Red eyes meet red eyes, there is no room to talk when you are running forward, but there is room for so many words in an incomplete story

Dinner ends and we retreat upstairs into the night.

I lie awake, listening to the sounds of the house They slip through the cracks in my room, barely audible but there, splintering. Stifled sobbing. Soft muttering. Shaky breathing. In the nights at that house, I hear my grandmother crying until sleep frees her.

Tonight, both of us stay up together, separated by a flight of stairs in the dark I cry alongside her, only a few steps away through the black How many members of this family of liars, smothered cryers, are screaming with us, in this quiet, quiet house. We are stranded in this close knit family. Silence, bare feet slide over a shag rug, shuffling towards the stairs. In the dark, you can’t see the bottom of the steps, so at the top, you are standing before an abyss

But finally, I see the path, different than expected. Watch it wind, watch it double back, watch it wrap into itself, confused. I’ll find you in the dark, Popo. We will run side by side.

by Julia H.