DISCERNMENT — MELODIE WONG

i’ll be turning twenty-one soon and i still feel like i’m eighteen.

maybe my brain wants to stay in moments i shared breaths with her. i remember those days; i remember thinking i would gladly take Hell if being with her is what put me there. for fear of creating something ugly, i don’t usually write about her. if i could put into words something that accurately depicted how i feel, i would. and it would maybe go something like this: something about how she’d never let me in her parents’ house, but i could guess what her room looked like anyways. something about opening the door to find the bed, her dresser, the mirrors —— everything missing. about how i’d open another door and find where she’d been hiding. about how she lived and died and was buried in that closet. and i lived a similar life, but escaped the darkness of my own closet sooner. and how life outside was greater, and brighter, and maybe i escaped, but maybe we have different definitions of escape. and how maybe, just maybe, we weren’t all that different if at the end of our lives we’re just bones and bones. and how the strings of our lives lay intertwined for a moment or two. but in the end i don’t write. and in the end she could never be something ugly. and in the end, i would never know her until she died, and i’m not sure if she ever really knew me.

CHING CHANG CHONG — JULIA ZHOU

Julia identifies as Asian American and American Born Chinese

Ching-ching is the sound: the sound of a cash register; the sound of money; the sound of success; the sound of an American dream, being achieved by this Chink.

Chang is the name: the name of a family; a name that paved the way. No, not for railroad tracks, but for the glistening yellow of gold, being rushed on by this oriental freak. is an insect: an invasive species you sought to exterminate; the rising tide of yellow peril across the Pacific. Weak.