‘We don’t got that color in stock,’ she repeated even after I pointed at the black lipstick.

‘You have to follow your heart,’ said the youngest of the lesbian triplets. ‘It led me to my husband.’

So, true, your bag is lost and so our sobriety. But at least the memory remains.

The smug look of certain people when I ask them to retrieve something labeled with my last name makes me wish it were even less phonetic.

‘This snow,’ she said. ‘It’s so wet it’s neither snow nor sleet. It’s—I don’t know—like water falling from the sky.’

The ladies circled the dryer once it hit the one minute mark, the largest claiming ownership while the others squawked in protest.

She felt flattered so many of us were vying for her attention, but we in the line had different thoughts regarding the payroll receptionist.

‘I didn’t know it’s her birthday too,’ she said, passing the signed card back. ‘In a week,’ he said, then added, ‘oh right. Happy birthday.’

Can’t ignore how it’s always standing room here. What a miserable elevator, our labor. We children of the equator.

There is some white substance melting outside my window. I call it promise.

My childhood off the boat is eating a donut with fork and spoon, a napkin hanging from the neck, while wearing a parka in summer.

He tugged at her sleeve. ‘How much?’ The clerk pointed at the the price tag, ‘$1.00’ in alphanumerals. ‘But I can’t read Chinese,’ he said.

Early memories of a soft spoken sea, where heavy leaves float on its tense surface, frozen in time.

Brewing nausea in my gut/ Churning a burrito wrapped with guilt/ Soon it will come out the butt/ Wiped away with a paper quilt.

Slow sleeping in this asphyxiated skin, as ashen as an asphalt grin.