I once expressed an interest in fanfiction about the television show Succession and she looked at me with infinite pity in her eyes and said “I think we’re just very different people.”
For months during the worst days, when we slept with cold cloths over our mouths and in the cracks of the windows, I promised myself I would leave California when it stopped burning, but it never did.
I say I am finding grace, but I think I am succumbing to liminality. My life runs between two parallel lines. I hop between either line, attempting to escape the middle ground of liminality that lies between them.
In many cases, people are seen only as laborers, not as people. They aren’t treated with respect or dignity. And yet employees are expected to devote their lives to their jobs.
Feeds are flooded with videos of Japanese and Korean supermarkets, convenience stores, and 7/11s. What does it mean for Asians to be "next in line to disappear," when they are now made so increasingly visible in contemporary media?
Each stroke of my rosined-up bow across the strings sounded, in my ears, akin to an injured animal. But my family seemed to enjoy my musical masochism.