When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

by Chen Chen

It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings.

Time dripped from the faucet like a magician’s botched trick.

Esperance, NY as if “hope” in French is a higher quality hope.

I wished for a place big enough for grief, & all I got was more grief, plus People magazine.

you are almost never why, why I am sad. You are just in the same room with me & my unsweet, uncharming, completely uninteresting sadness.

I’m envious of the redwood who never has to say I am & who will outlive me.

Come by often for a cup of tea, in all your unbridled unknowability.

The train is an accordion, playing the silence of adult waiting.

The reader’s face is a child’s rapt face. The book is her latest soul, disguised as a more or less acceptable concrete object.

I’ve befriended every shade of evening & they cannot recommend me highly enough.

I admire my horoscope for its conviction. I envy its consistency. Every day. Every day, there is a future to be aggressively vaguer about.

My job is to trick adults into knowing they have hearts.

Trying to get over what my writer friend said, All you write about is being gay or Chinese. Wish I had thought to say to him, All you write about is being white or an asshole.