loves me | loves me not
luv u
a love zine for q/t/nb/woc
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the brazilian poet ferreira gulag once said, “art exists because life is not enough.” in that search for enough-ness, fullness, and finding a soft center again, we’ve put together this zine about love featuring work entirely by queer, trans, non-binary, and women artists of color. loves me | loves me not aims to reconcile the seemingly endless tightrope walk that exists between the acts of loving and being loved. the ways in which love holds and hurts in communities that look different than the ones we prioritize in our limited societal imagination. the way love tethers and frees. the infinite and changing ways we love and learn from our ever-evolving, ever-orbiting selves. this zine is both hurting and healing. freshly made and cauterized wound. open palm and clenched fist. these poems, photographs, collages, short stories, and works of art are all for you. this zine is for you. happy valentine’s day. we love you. jenevieve ting + nikita lamba
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jenevieve nikita yesika edwin rikki suzi jenny +emily margot cloud claire amber bint jessica posh ambrielle sophia ilani jennelle lorna anna andy
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ting lamba salgado bodney wright hyun villegas mae-czachor terc abuhasooni jia espinosa-jones ediba zepeda tash moore li fay fong xu rajo su
photo: nikita lamba they say I’ve got something dark inside like my blood is pools of india ink my lungs two sleeping bats– wings waiting to unfold like I’ve got night skies constellating inside my head the roots of a tree trembling down the trunk of my body like I’ve got dust trailing from the soles of my feet and fossils where my bones should be fingerprints leaving silver mercury stains on everything I touch I’ve got teeth turning yellow like some horrible fruit and hair like spiderwebs whisking up my arms and legs– matted and fine and black as night– and a groove between my eyebrows that you’ll need to ford to get anywhere near my eyes– so dark you cannot tell the pupils apart– which eat all light like hungry black holes you could suffocate in but instead you sing a lullaby, a hymn easing me into my nighttime skin rocking me gently to sleep in myself they say I’ve got something dark inside and you say “I know” and you do. words: nikita lamba
photo: jenevieve ting i remember the first time i was ever made to feel yellow. on a blacktop, surrounded by faces that blur now in retrospect like off-white seashells, a girl no greater than an oak tree branch looked me dead in the center of my almond eyes — eyes i never felt were any more or less worthy of humanity than another’s — and said, “well, you’re still asian.” i think often about those words, their proclamation, their insistence on “other,” their poking and prodding and attempt at building difference, distance. i feel close to that girl now because her words felt like the same albatross i wore around my own neck for years, the one i still reach for on nights when i feel the weight of a yellow shadow heavier than my own heart. for a long time i wanted to take an eraser to my skin, to hide that which i know now makes me beautiful, worthy, enough. i wanted to disappear into the comfort and crystalline heartbreak that is whiteness. if i could just be like all those other smiling, pink-faced girls, maybe the masquerade ball would spill into the morning after, maybe i would feel like a girl who deserved to feel — not good, or better, or best — but just feel. when i hold my own torso in the mirror today, i do not cower at her color. i feel in my body that yellow is my story, my north star. time and time again we are presented with the same question shaped like a four-sided throwing star — what we are is human, molded by a continent many do not call home, hungry, ready, bruised by hope and longing to touch the center instead of the margins, tired, open-mouthed and trembling, beauty gone silent. what we are is asian. still asian. and i am still here. words: jenevieve ting
art: suzi hyun
photo: jenevieve ting
when you realize that you’ve spent the better half of your life being emotionally available to everyone but yourself, you pause. you take stock of the things that you have grown accustomed to forgetting to pick up at the grocery store. all the things you have learned to forsake, the things that feed you, that nourish your most feeble and hungry homes. you wonder how long you have gone without knowing how to make yourself dinner. you catch glimpses of what you thought was your reflection but which you now know is an apology masquerading as a young woman. the things you have built entire pillars of identity around — wit, a knee-jerk tendency to reach for coolness before warmth, comfortable distance in favor of intimacy, self-awareness begetting self-effacement — are, in a microfiber of a moment, reduced to sandcastles. you stand for the first time in your own room, looking down at the same hands that have always known give, give, give and you are made aware of the lack. you want to grasp at something, anything, but there is nothing for you to claim as yours. you have spent entire planetary rotations minimizing yourself, pulling and stretching and rendering the cloth so taut that it no longer appears to be anything other than open, ready, available for anything, everything. you are twenty-three when you realize you are a finite resource. that there is an expiration date to all of this surrender. you enroll yourself in a different kind of give-and-take, one that bears fruit. for you. sweet and kind and soft in the back of your throat, you begin the no-shortcut work of forgiving the selves you have worn and been. some days, you still have a tendency to crave being everything to everyone. you learn this does not have to be your con or achilles heel, but rather, the home address recited from memory, the same two shoes your feet rest surest in.
words: jenevieve ting
photo: jenevieve ting
you begin to realize that getting to know someone as quickly and deeply and as soul-bearingly as possible is not a trait of a neighborhood superhero or a magic trick worthy of a curtain call. it has often been a way to forgo the messy shoe-gazing introspection that would one day dream of calling itself self-love. it is a way to avoid learning how to hold your own hand. your therapist will tell you that you need to “do less doing, and do more allowing.” the phrase strikes like lightning to your tin-eared self when she first says it, resonates and reverberates like a solitary, pregnant droplet in a tin can. you realize that you can’t do away with the sadness, the anxiety, that you should not and cannot just do away with all of those empty rooms. it’s been hard for me to realize that at 23 i am just now beginning to feel like i am unraveling ten years worth of trauma in the shape of a game of cat’s cradle to which i alone offer any hands. what’s been resolved will no doubt need revisiting. i know there is so much more to unwind. i marinate in the afternoons spent centering my mind in grey areas. there is languor in this form of self-acceptance — sometimes, there is even music. i find solace in not having answers all the time. i’m trying to endear myself to the once unutterable idea that my body is not meant to be a tree that only shelters others from sudden storms. i am only now beginning to allow — and expect — those familiar, dark, empty rooms. i wonder of all the hearts i have borne to others, how many times the recipient’s hands have ever truly felt my intention. my pink, enveloping, outof-focus attempt at loving. i bear my heart again anyways. there is still light in here, i tell her.
words: jenevieve ting
art: suzi hyun
photo: rikki wright I swallowed moonlight Rubbed my skin with the liquid balm of the dark The hair on my arms standing into A siren’s call for us to come home There is a boy somewhere inside me looking back at an old street of houses
photo: rikki wright I am coming in my loudest form There is a gallop of night-black horses stuttering bass across the sky and I am riding every one of them to get to you Do you see ‘em? Do you see him waiting?
Shoulder blades stretch into the children of wings The water washing the sand beneath his feet Tells him to be still There is nothing for you there where you watch Where you become a mouth Teeth laughing as they close around the body That is not yours The blood baptizing your gums like found fruit in the river of god White bones building a monument for what we never became
Do you see it, The boy running back Playing in a pen of unkept hearts? I—I become moonlight for you! The serum for all your dreams But where did you go in the dark? When did you become a secret that never rests? There have been men made to ball me up so small that I become nothing but the truth Their heavy/nimble fingers picking twigs that curl me into wicker for their palms And what am I a home without a home for now?
And in its quiet digestion You can hear the air pass a song of tears through me Wouldn’t you love a boy Running/ blue/ caught in faggot black smoke? I don’t know where he is But he must be drifting somewhere tightly between the seam of sea and sky by day I am coming for you Once I decide to leave myself I am coming for you once You decide to leave the lies you tell Over and over
words: edwin bodney
But I still look I still cry out in the distant sleep of forever Listen for your footsteps and the day the horses will have grown tired and I have caught enough of nightfall’s honey To lie down Become a man’s never ending feast Both of us Two different shades of blue
words: edwin bodney
photo: susan lin and, is the question - the mother question? the question that begins all answers and the answer that stills all feet running to the stream that runs to the river the river that runs to the sea. the children stop their playing and listen when the mother questioned is asked. does she love me? you? us? what is the line between fear and love? my mother does not like to sleep at home alone, you say. and so you go. and it is an empty house with two people inside of its throat. if you listen closely you can hear the house breathe. its foundation sighs. the clock inside ticks backwards. the analog blinks in place. you, your mother, and the ghost in the curtains. the ghost smells of jasmine flowers. hibiscus petals.
words: susan lin
photo: susan lin
the mother question is the house that destroys itself. and you want to know mother, what does distance mean? does the moon really not have it’s own light. why do we wear clothes when it is not cold outside? why are we afraid to hold hands with strangers? mother. mother, these are my questions. where do fathers go? when they go, do they return? you ask the question, the mother question, but the light behind the light extinguishes. you unpack your bags at the train station. you put your comb gently under the bench next to the childhood blanket next to the crayon maps next to the rattles next to letters from your sister. and when the train arrives, you leave your luggage behind.
words: susan lin
art: nikita lamba
art: anna rajo Put your hands on me– Fold my head into the Rose and thorn of your neck Plant flecks of gold In the sand of my skin Touch me gently Watch them grow
Tip me over– Watch all of my constellations Pour on to the bed Stick them to the ceiling and then in darkness Tell me gently: Why two moons never collide Why stars will always turn to dust in my mouth Why night lets its tears Drip into morning Why fire is hungry Why grief cannot sleep What makes hearts crack Like glass figurines– What makes everything glow And end too soon.
words: nikita lamba
Boys hollering out of their cars never bothered us much. That summer we found ourselves cycling on smooth pavement and mustering up our best imitation of feminist disgust. Our purses were weightless and only ever held a flip phone and a few dollars. “Perv,” we’d yell. We didn’t know what it meant for the word to feel heavy in our mouths. Trips to the grocery store became our first exercise in sensuality. The distance to the store and back was three hollers long. We would pass Courtnee, a girl a grade above us, legs draped over my neighbor on the low curb to the side of his house. We rode as the desert sun warmed our bodies and made us aware of the sweat between our thighs. It was always Rosie, Shannon, and I. The fluorescently lit cul-desacs were our classrooms and we were eager to learn. As we fumbled with our shorts, our mothers tried to read their fortunes in the splintered corks that they would sift out from their glasses. Dusk warned us of red cheeks and heads tilted back in loud laughter. Only synthetic fire logs burned brighter than my mother’s smile. This was happiness. My mother and I used to go to open houses of tract homes together. We would wander through the sterile homes and would only partially feign excitement when floor plans included additional hallway storage. Backyards turned us into landscapers and the pools turned us into lounging celebrities. The real estate agent, sensing our projections, asked; “Isn’t it something?” We picked up endless brochures, listened to well-trained pitches, and ate a series of store bought baked goods while sipping cheap coffee. I sat in bathtubs, jumped out at my mom from around corners, and asked questions about ghosts. My mom asked about the cost. We did this often—each time creating an unspoken pact to explore the different lives we would never live, as mothers and daughters do. A seldom seen father who worked for the government in a vague position of power, a pack of dogs we inherited from an ill relative, a desire to live in a lie. After each visit we would return home to find the cul-desac and our recycling bin overflowing with wine bottles.
words: jessica zepeda
My father didn’t work for the government. He worked for a trucking company that delivered preserved foods to chain restaurants. He said his knees needed the dry desert heat. Any drop of temperature would ripple through his body and force him to acknowledge his age. He brought home boxes of Panda Express fortune cookies. “They’re only $10 a box,” his open toed sandals always contently tapping to the sound of an easy bargain as he set the box in front of me. He worked long days and would come home in the late hours of the night, often with fast food in hand. The small hum of the TV would fill the house to remind me that I had a father. I found myself sharing the couch with him in those late nights, eating fries and watching films my mother said I wasn’t ready for. We would sit together and he would tell me to get fortune cookies for him and I from the Panda Express box tucked away in the pantry. My eyes wandered through the shelves of snacks with logos that were carefully crafted in pitch large rooms for families like ours, until, finally landing on the only packaged unpredictability in the corner. I would unwrap mine on the walk back before I handed over his. While his aged hands contradicted all possibility, his future already told, he would speak with a full mouth; “you have to eat it before you read it.” I never questioned who set these rules. I listened to him and chewed until I was permitted to read the strip of paper that always vaguely spoke about something new coming my way. I began to pack them in my school lunch and became a ten-dollar box seer at the peanut allergy table. I would entertain Rosie and Shannon who, despite their evolved immunities, joined the peanut-phobic few at the table. We sat there each early afternoon and all laughed when none of the fortunes mentioned the fear of anaphylaxis. Kyle Chilson always placed his knees close to mine when I read his lucky numbers aloud. “12, 3, 8, 9, and 12 again, ” I said. “What am I supposed to do with these numbers again?” His knees lightly tapped on my jeans, asking a different question. I answered with unflinching certainty. I was his sibyl. He would know nothing without me. “Use them however you want.” “Like how?” words: jessica zepeda
He placed a hand on my thigh and I tried my best to ignore the warmth of his fingers as he articulated a slight pressure into each tip. I thought to myself that I should wear more skirts, but the thought became a brief spasm as both Rosie and Shannon motioned that it was time to leave. I stole myself from him and ran after the girls with the remains of my lunch and Kyle’s fortune in my hand. I threw them away on the way out. It always started, ended, and skidded like that during the school year. Every micro act of skin contact made us think about a future that only existed in hypothetical fortunes and short- lived knee grazes. And while school introduced the idea of touch, the heat exacerbated it. That summer we kissed too many boys, often in our own homes. We went on mall trips, bike ride straddling. It became formulaic. Rosie told us that her mother gave her condoms. “She gave me five.” Five opportunities, five moments, five knee grazes. Rosie’s condoms made her otherworldly and all-knowing. We orbited around her like small moons in constant need of a gravitational pull. We entered into the world of handshakes at the front door, reminders to keep our own bedroom doors open. The echo of parents downstairs—“whatcha guys doing? —reverberated within us. Us singing back, “on the computer.” We would place our chests against theirs, our legs apart in prayer to face them. The open door was both menacing and arousing. Our bare legs graced the all-over carpet and reddened our knees. We would periodically look over to the door and break the embrace, erupting into a series of “um’s” and nervous laughter. One month into the season and Courtnee was the only girl we knew to get an abortion. We carried her secret for her and only discussed it amongst ourselves, but our mothers carried it farther. They laid her entire life out like a crime scene and Courtnee’s mom avoided our cul-de- sac as a result. It was either the parents that failed her, the school that objectified her, the boy who destroyed her, or a combination of all three. Their glasses would swirl and so would their pride: “my daughter knows better.” We weren’t sure and it scared us.
words: jessica zepeda
We discussed Courtnee and her mother’s decision at length one night at a sleepover. It was early in the morning and we could hear my father snoring from down the hall. Our constant whispering began to converge with our tired throats and our voices swelled into a beautiful chorus of raspy coos. Shannon was afraid of walking around school with a swollen belly—she would have also gotten the abortion. Rosie claimed she wouldn’t be pregnant at all and proudly showed her three remaining condoms. When it came to me, I could barely say an “I don’t know.” My reality became blurred and ruined by hours spent creating versions of fictional lives with my mother in empty houses. I tried on motherhood and felt the enormity of it unable to properly hold me as we all slowly nodded to sleep. I imagined my emerging hips and tugging shirts as my pint-sized husband bid me farewell from the front door, with a briefcase in tow. I thought about red stained teeth and how I would show my daughter the way to pour wine with a flick of a wrist. But I would never tell her she knows better because I could never be certain she would. When we woke in the late afternoon, after a sleepover, we abandoned the pillows and blankets scattered on my bedroom floor. We bumped and collided into each other as we put on mascara in my mother’s master bathroom. We poured ourselves bowls of cereal as my mother watched a house renovation show on TV. “Where are you girls going?” “Ride bikes, maybe go to the mall. I don’t know.” “Text me when you figure out where you’re going to end up.” We grabbed our weightless purses and ran at a quick gallop before hopping on our bikes. “Keep your knees closed,” she shouted from the door we forgot to close. When we returned to school that fall we tried to find Courtnee. We were different. We forgot how to sit still. We were surrounded by all the boys who fumbled with our waistbands, unsure where to direct our eyes behind classroom closed doors. The heat hadn’t completely lifted and we would spend our lunches watching our classmates through the haze, hoping to find the girl we were looking for in the mirage. words: jessica zepeda
art: ilani fay
We stopped waiting for our answer and rode off to find it. It was almost dusk when we worked up the nerve to ride to her house. Rosie was sure that one of the family’s she babysat for on the weekends lived close to her. That was the entirety of the plan: ride around a development until we saw Courtnee’s strawberry blonde hair. The house was five miles away and we all felt our mothers encroaching texts envelop us with the night. Streetlights came on one by one as if to say you will find something new. The lawns of overzealous homeowners, hard pressed to maintain the dream, came alive with evening sprinklers. We alternated our paths between the misting sidewalks and empty streets. Rosie led us through dirt lots with forgotten signs announcing future developments to save time while our cruiser bikes struggled to deal with the unleveled ground in the dark. “This is the one,” Rosie called back. There was no grand reveal or showmanship. It all looked the same. We circled the tract twice before we admitted defeat. The dark had taken the life out of suburbia, but then there she was. A second story window flickered to life. The back of her strawberry blonde head perfectly framed in the windowpane. I never saw her face, but I didn’t need to—I knew it was her. In that moment I decided to not tell the other girls I had seen her. This would be our secret. I felt that I owed it to her. All those late night and early morning conversations suddenly felt cruel as I watched her pull stands of strawberry blonde up into a ponytail with a band from around her wrist. I rode slowly to bask in her image for as long as possible, inevitably falling behind the other girls. But suddenly the light was out. I looked at the back of Rosie and Shannon’s heads, unaware of the symmetry. Our mothers waited, ready with reprimanding. We lied and said we were at the others’ house. “It’s not safe for you girls to be out so late,” was crucial to their cacophony. Although our conversations about Courtnee faded, I still thought about the floor plan of her two-story home. When we heard later her family had moved without selling, my mother and I made plans to go to the open house.
words: jessica zepeda
photo: nikita lamba
The weekend I spent in San Antonio was hot and brief. I fell in love with the city. I imagined moving there. Living in a big green house full of rooms I don’t use. Getting a dog. Keeping a garden. Having the local women over for breakfast every Sunday. Meeting them for chilaquiles every Saturday. Teaching myself to drive in one of the wide empty streets. Having a slow quiet life. I’d write you letters from Texas. Each one full of my life. I’d ask you if you were ready to come live with me. To settle down. I’d call you on Tuesdays. Talk to you while I made dinner. I’d say things like “I love you and would rather be alone than with anyone else”. I wouldn’t be afraid of scaring you off ‘cause I’d be too far to make you nervous. All my poems will talk about Los Angeles. How we kissed beneath her palm trees. I’d complain about the heat. I’d get another dog when you refuse to move to Texas too. When I visit my mother I’ll call you. Meet you for dinner. Ask you if you are happy. Call you a liar when you say that you are. Argue most of the meal. Cry when I drive back to my hotel. Write another poem. Then another. Return to my quiet green house in San Antonio. Let my dogs climb into bed with me. Wait until you call again. You always call. Always want me after I swear I am done. I am never done.
words: yesika salgado
art: margot terc
art: jenny villegas + emily mae czachor
art: jenny villegas + emily mae czachor
pink, enveloping an act of loving lying here, unfolding ourselves into a shared warmth mouths like open doors drinking each other this is the place i longed to find i am learning now that it was always within me to allow love’s shyest seeds to bloom i just needed to let the light in i can hear it now the way it sways and coos in my ear the heat of loving holding your body close and then closer this is the heart teaching itself to expand each time it retracts tender in the soft sinewy synapses that hum when i see you when you pull me in closer and the fog clears and the lights become whispers i feel you here and i know there is grace in letting go healing in holding on beauty in everything your softness touches i feel you here in the blinding midnight song and the story the back of your neck tells i’m everywhere in an instant to take you in when my hands talk to you i know there is music between your thighs a fresh bath of flowers a chorus of give and take our names like our bodies, shared giving and taking and giving and taking and the echo of our own making lighting everything from within
words: jenevieve ting
words: jenevieve ting
art: jenny villegas + emily mae czachor
i was not prepared to love you with my eyes open aware of the rhythm of everything you held still I can’t get the image out of my head you nestled beneath two handfuls of quiet roses and the way my eyes could feel an imprint begin to press itself onto my temples overabundance overabundance remember this the way you hold yourself, in it i see a paper crane’s unfolded self healing — the color of ruby a chance to begin again in your eyes, a prayer for a day we cannot touch breaking the salt on wooden beams and morning light i carry you in my fingertips’ last chance at remembering in your body a story about making up for lost time lilies of the valley built belonging to the inset of your forearm a new way to see an old self a girl who still believes love will get the last word in i found a pale pink rose in a bathroom stall here even beauty’s reminder to not abandon softness in the dark
words: jenevieve ting
art: jenny villegas + emily mae czachor
i collect the seeds where music tells me your body bore fruit here where you rest your head — a thousand melodies in the form of dimming lights my body an open door only beckoning color color color we built something strong even on hollow floorboards hold me again in the first night’s embrace 5am washing away all that made our bodies tremble even in loose-fitting threads I hold tight to a patchwork of you kisses like orchestral opening ceremonies i welcome them when your body stills in the night’s knowing escape my tongue spells out “allow it” like a revolving door she enters a thousand ways to forgive the times you sold a body short here in the pit of her sweetest plum, there is a way to grow a garden once more
words: jenevieve ting
art: suzi hyun You were a drop a night a fast beam fading quickly into dusk You were but twenty-two days skate wheels over a cracked sidewalk You were the mud in my fingers, the rich girl flinging a nickel into my soupy hand You were a damp room, a paisley shirt, counting the dollar bills. It was a hard-to-forget time of my life Mouth gaping, Hands reaching, and You were all of it.
Mama told me the bad guys, they’d be in red They’d have their horns out, and I would bleed But I’ve only ever pricked myself on rosebushes, Sewing needles, and cacti, Friendly things I loved Until I couldn’t Don’t you hate it when you Bite too hard into a ripe peach Their cores are rough, all the same.
words: claire jia
art: cloud abuhasooni I am only as wide as the creases between her lips only as kind as the creaks behind my bed rocking us into moon cradle She comes before hazy mid march hits the stomach like a rock or a too glazed donut We stay up all night I pack bags under my eyes shake hands with the morning light smack mallets into high fives high sixes higher sevens
art: jennelle fong I’m on the edge of the plank asking for you to take my hand and jump with me but here you are singing me back to sleep and steering the boat to shore.
She is my honey wine too soft reading light the plastic on the furniture We hold without touching and touch like free falling softly into windowpanes southern quilts beneath us unrolled into love
words: bint ediba
words: nikita lamba
art: ambrielle moore
words: ambrielle moore
art: ambrielle moore
words: ambrielle moore
art: ambrielle moore
photo: nikita lamba
She moved way too fast Stealing kisses as the door closed, and always losing her keys More racecar than woman. She always had a plan A, B, and C So that when he canceled on her; She could pretend it didn’t affect her Because she was already on her way to the next destination; Plans lined up like dominoes or a Saturday morning haircut
Her room was a maze of clothes Straight from the laundromat to her bedroom floor Ripped condom wrappers and burnt matches from the candles she lit for her visitors; she never expected them to stay until morning Except for one.
Never really self-conscious either Didn’t spend hours in the mirror picking at her face or doing her hair But she hated to have her picture taken; And would always curl her fingers back into little fists So that no one saw her bitten fingernails.
words: ambrielle moore
words: amber espinosa-jones
photo: jenevieve ting
photo: jenevieve ting Once I almost loved a poet. But we were too young, and his Self deprecating humor made my admiration seem trivial. It was trivial. But his words were crisply beautiful And his fingers unbearably soft. Everyone else I've almost loved is calloused. Sometimes I watched his hands and Wondered where they'd been. Other times I imagined them holding a pencil. And still other times, when we were alone, I put his fingers into my mouth, soft But tough, like the petals of a rose. After we ended I developed an appetite for flowers, Eating them off of restaurant centerpieces.
words: anonymous
words: jacqueline jones
photo: lorna xu
photo: lorna xu
words: lorna xu
words: lorna xu
words: claire jia
words: claire jia
art: posh tash
art: posh tash
i want to communicate a story through each shot
words: posh tash
“but aren’t asians so conservative?”
words: posh tash
photo: jenevieve ting
photo: jenevieve ting
what does it mean to not know how to say in your mother tongue “i’m proud of you” because you have never heard it said to you. my relationship to my parents lacks the intimacy for tenderness to find a home. tenderness that sounds like “i’m sorry. what i did was wrong. i know you’re trying your best. how can we work together to make this better?” we don’t have a language of intimacy, we don’t even speak the same language. my parents and i use different words to carry our ideas and they never seem to meet each other. we are only able to cobble together dialogue with the simplest phrases of mandarin held together by tenuous threads of english. the thinness of our sentences fall flat when trying to hold the weight of our love. our conversations flit around airily with have-you-eaten-yet’s and when-are-you-going-to-dothat-thing-i-asked-of-you’s. they lack grounding in the depths of questions whose answers i long for “what gets you out of bed to face the uncertainty of life and death?” “where do you see the future for us?” “how do you carry millennia of ancestors in you?” i know in my body that my parents want to ask me questions too when they look at me like i’m a stranger in their home, i feel the distance between what we say and what we mean.
i know in my bones that my parents love me because it’s Love that drives their questioning. and i want us to explore that immutable and timeless Love but we need a language like we need a flashlight to navigate the dark. language that shines a light on the brokenness of silence and gives us the courage to seek healing and transformation. with language, each conversation allows us to wade deeper into who we are. i push at each opportunity asking my parents. “what does it mean to you to be chinese” “who were ’s best childhood friends?” “what was grandma like?” and in seeing my trust, they return courageous in their answers “to be chinese is ... to know your history.” “i’ve never asked him about his childhood, i’ll ask him on Line.” “...we can talk about grandma when you’re home.” the bravery of our questions speaks to the strength of our love and gives me a taste of what initmacy can feel like. i see a language growing out of our questions, one that feels right on my tongue. i know how it feels to be proud of our love and hope one day to be able to speak its truth.
words: andy su
words: andy su
photo: jenevieve ting farther south than I usually go I meet you on a street corner I don’t remember anymore and resist the urge to touch your cheek upstairs you order like we’re celebrating and maybe we are only you’ve forgotten to tell me and with every sip of wine I forget that I’m not in on the secret but orecchiette feels so pretty on my lips somehow i’m never hungry for dessert when you’re with me so we leave two bites into the tiramisu trying not to stumble sticky heat threatening to expose salty secrets tucked behind my knees and you’ve pulled me on to st. mark’s place and we go downstairs to a japanese bar low lit writing on the wall I spot names in hearts but none of them are ours and I take this as an omen and the sake unsettles the wine I’ve begun to get angry but I can only say so much for this joint
words: nikita lamba
photo: jenevieve ting I fall up the basement stairs and you take off Eastbound– always gravitating back to where you came from– against that manifest destiny that I’ve always loved– so I throw the compass for a loop and head North and you follow me through two secret doors, wood-paneled, velvet walls new-age frescoes and new york’s finest drunks the drinks are too sweet, just the way I want them and I find any reason to yell at you for not wanting me or for wanting you to want me I can’t tell anymore my head is exploding and I know I’m right, I can’t figure how but– it hardly matters, does it you’ve cleared the cheque and you’ve left the bar and me to myself and I can’t bear it, falling back downstairs but nobody’s smiling fighting old fights picking old wounds kicking old hungry dogs– clutching at scars and screaming for them to fucking bleed out or close up words: nikita lamba
art: sophia li
listen to my heart
o like a star - corinne bailey rae losing - h.e.r. saved - khalid elusive - lianne la havas noble heart - phox plastic - moses sumney melting - kali uchis something in the way - jorja smith so special - muna before you - carousel used to love you - yuna ft. jhene aiko
playlist: sophia li
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jenevieve ting nikita lamba yesika salgado edwin bodney rikki wright suzi hyun margot terc claire jia bint ediba jessica zepeda posh tash ambrielle moore ilani fay jennelle fong anna rajo andy su
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@tingrolls @instanonacta @yesikastarr edwinbodney.com @foreverrikk @suzipudding margot terc clairejia zenobiawrites @macklemoms @poshtash mooreofambie @ilanifay jennelle-fong.com @anna.rajo @buzzsu