Ming Li

15

Away

step.

step—

step;
step,
step step stepstepstep one more step to throw myself down in cornstarch-sand
it's so impossibly SOFT, rolling flowing dreamy curves until I long for the reality of an edge…
This is not my summer.
My summer is running along rough rocks, tumbling stumbling scraping granite and the deliciously real pain of a skinned knee. There is no reassuring sense of aliveness to be found in the thump of my body into bland white pillows of cornstarch.
My summer is a fierce splash into exhilarating frigidity, frantic gasps for breath re-establishing reaffirming renewing my existence. But this ocean is too warm, and so I can't tell if the salt in my mouth is seawater or tears.
rewind
(This is not my summer.
My summer is swirling curling slashing graphite running across crisply smoothed paper delineating cryptic chains of cryptic symbols that supposedly translate into my universe, and yet remain meaningless gray lines until I want to snap my pencil lead and crumple my homework and scream, "I HATE TRIGONOMETRY!"
And then my grandmother is there, a hand resting on my shoulder, grounding me and stabilizing my emotions as her deft fingers work magic on the page, bending the symbols to her will, and I gasp in delighted revelation.
But this summer, my shoulder feels oddly empty, and my grandmother's fingers are creaky with age, and her number-magic is slipping sliding slowly departing from her mind:
"are you going to be in high school next year?"
"yes grandma I already started high school."
"oh."
...
"are you taking trigonometry soon?"
and my breaths are suddenly frantic gasps of I'm dreaming I'm dreaming I'm dreaming this isn't real
this is not my summer
so I run away.)
step.

step—

step;
step,
step step stepstepstep one more step to throw myself down in cornstarch-sand
thump.
for once I welcome the impossibly soft blandness because maybe right now I don’t want my existence to be confirmed
maybe right now I want to believe that I'm not real it's not real this isn't real
my grandmother is FINE and I'm DREAMING—
but the sudden sharp salt taste suggests otherwise…
it's seawater, I swear.
drip.

drip—

drip;
drip,
drip drip dripdripdrip...