after Megan Fernandes

In the creative writing seminar, our professor says, “All good poems have a narrative.” To be a writer is to invent, to shapeshift. To swallow a piece of fish and think of metaphor–the ocean my parents fractured to be here, lungs brined with salt. To look at the moon, mundane in the inky night, and think, how tragic–to inhabit such beauty, yet only ever be admired from a distance. I was so sad when I was young. I invented narrative out of everything. The lines of my palms were the river my grandmother crossed in the winter of war, they held a lineage whose threads I stitched into history. My eyes weren’t narrow–they were almond-curved, my skin was golden like the overflowing sun. The vendor in Chinatown wasn’t some random man–he was snaggle-toothed, skin calloused like the Himalayas, weary with intergenerational longing. If I told him that, he would probably laugh in my face. But I couldn’t be miserable for nothing. Like that one Bojack Horseman episode where Diane asks, What was it all for, if her damage was just damage? If it couldn’t even be good. I remember thinking, God, how relatable. Except she was a cartoon character and this was my inglorious, little life, it was the camellias blooming in June and just like that, my depression was no longer seasonal. It was growing up in a nice, cookie-cutter suburb and attending an ivy league school and feeling like sh-- that I still felt like sh--. My teenage years are cracked eggshells left behind in hollow nests, which translates to: I’m past the age where writing poetry is acceptable and not f---ing weird. Now, even language won’t save me, won’t turn this damage into something meaningful. But last week, I drove to Holmdel Park, fed bread crumbs to smiling, quacking ducks. They were untainted in their innocence, like the kids chasing kites in a stagnant wind, laughing as they fell together in the damp grass. I am trying to measure the world by these quiet, passing joys. To see a tree and think, That is a tree. Nothing more. To swallow each day with ordinary delight, remembering that this is my lifetime. At the park, as I turned to leave, a woman asked if I could take her picture. She had just moved here, she explained, and wanted to show her parents she was doing well. In the photo, she smiled wide, the kind where your eyes crinkle. It was a little crooked, but she thanked me anyway. Pausing briefly, she asked where I went to school, what I was studying. For a second, I imagined a life where we inherit love from strangers. How easy, uncomplicated, that universe. Where the story between her and me lasted longer than that small encounter. Some neat, satisfying narrative. But this one is gentler, and requires no fantasy or metaphor. In the real ending, she and I said goodbye, parting into our separate futures. But there was the moment before, when we stood so close together our shoulders nearly touched. Our eyes acknowledged each other. In that brief space of kindness, we hadn’t noticed the sky around us unfurling, blooming shades of orange and red.