Emergency Contact

by Mary H.K. Choi

“It’s a privilege, and part of acknowledging that privilege is doing it honorably.

Think hard about where your inspiration is coming from. Are you writing stereotypes? Tropes? Are you fetishizing the otherness? Whose ideas are you spreading? Really consider how you transmit certain optics over others. Think about how much power that is.”

“It’s about finding the truth in fiction,”

but the way his Adam’s apple bobbed was mesmerizing.

Some people’s coping mechanisms were all about festering and secrecy and ruminating until you grew yourself a nice little tumor in your heart with a side of panic attack.

and every time “he” came up, Penny pictured a penis wearing sunglasses and a fedora with a little jacket.

“imposter syndrome.” Informally used to describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments despite external evidence of their competence.

It wasn’t a romance; it was too perfect for that.

They could get to know each other completely and get comfortable before they had to do anything unnecessarily overwhelming like look at each other’s eyeballs with their eyeballs.

Penny thought of this Korean saying for when you really, really liked something. You’d say it “fit your heart exactly.”

If you waste that chance, your talent dies. That’s when you start dying along with it.”

He missed her the second she fell out of view.

“You’ve got to understand that not everybody’s going to be exactly your kind of person.

“I know I love someone when I can’t remember what they look like in any real way. I can never seem to recall whether they’re handsome or ugly or if other people think they’re cute. All I know is that when I’m not with them and I think about them, where their face should be is this big cloud of good feelings and affection.”

Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.

To be the hero, you had to decide it was you.

I like knowing that you exist. It doesn’t make me feel any less lonely, because life is lonely, but it makes me feel a lot less alone.”