The train screams on the hot metal tracks. We throw open the window to chase away the sticky humidity that seeps under our skin and lingers. A cool breeze filters through the screen, to tell us stories of where it’s been and where it was made, between the four corners of the world and within the hands of God.
***
When I dissociate it’s impossible to think of anyone besides myself. All I want is to come back to myself. When I’m present it allows me to disentangle my heart from my heart and tune in to someone else’s. It feels paradoxical. Contradictory. Necessary.
I miss myself. I miss the way I used to be able to see the world. That vision is clouded now, and I’m still not sure what happened. Maybe nothing happened. Maybe I happened, or stopped happening.
Why?
***
“Heartbreak sucks.”
I’m sitting in a chair and everyone is watching. I stare at the ceiling, at the wall, at the floor, out the window, anywhere but people’s eyes. I can’t stare into their eyes.
I don’t want to be there, but for whatever reason God thinks I should be there. So I sit, and I share, and I shake. I pray at least one person know they aren’t alone.
It’s not supposed to be about us.
***
We talk about a single line in a poem for two hours, and even then the questions aren’t resolved. A couple of us continue scattered conversation throughout the rest of the day, but it’s not satisfying. There are no answers, but we keep trying to find them. That’s where the beauty is. That’s the art of the thing. This constant striving. If we give up seeking and discovering, well, I don’t really want to know what would happen.
Meaning is already there. We don’t make it. We perceive it. We seek it. We discover it.
***
Megan and I walk across campus to see the baby bunnies. We’re enthralled. We tip-toe closer, disregarding anyone who stops to wonder what two young women are doing in the middle of the path, staring into the bushes and squealing under their breath. Mama Bunny watches us with the whites of her eyes, her ears swirling at our every step.
She starts to eat.
Baby Bunny is the size of a leaf. When Megan goes to make a phone call, I creep closer with hearts in my eyes. It’s completely oblivious to my presence, not even flinching when I bring my eye to my camera and try to capture some of the magic. Of course, I’m not successful. You can’t capture that on camera.
***
I journal with my face to the sun and my hair piled on top of my head with careless twists and turns of the fragile elastic band holding it all together. Sitting in the grass, my friends read Tennyson aloud to each other. There are mushrooms growing beneath the tree that stretches its limbs above our tired heads.
***
Eliana Chow 
Leave a Reply