Illustration by Claire Easton
falling in love with you has been carrying
packs of portable tissues because i’ve been bursting
into hot sobs at the grocery store
i’ve been drinking eight glasses of water a day because
you said it’s good for me and now
i need to pee all the fucking time
if i uncross my legs on the train i will explode
like a broken fire hydrant that dribbles into the neighborhood
picture this: i play with children on the way home from work and
we joyfully take hammers to things
inside, i dream lushly about standing in
heart-dammed rivers and
getting soaked to the (blood and) bone
Amy Gong Liu is a senior in Columbia College majoring in human rights and ethnicity and race studies. She writes poetry and prose about the East Asian diaspora, cultural signs and signification, intergenerational melancholia, oceans, and more. Amy is currently working on a book of lyric prose about the gaps of Mandarin-English translation in intimate spaces. In her free time she plays water polo, reads, and daydreams about capturing the electric. Follow her on social media: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter