a love letter of many. I was better last night. Some autumns ago in a Chinatown apartment, pinning roaches to death with the end of a plastic broom. Or maybe somewhere in the Outer Richmond with the last hours of light in the day, pressed against my mold-ridden basement apartment…

love-live-tweeting the film without timestamps. feelings in consecutive order: There’s a reason why we pull our phones sees sunsets and sunrises before our own eyes do. An incredible opening where we are asked what we thought we’d be doing from the vantage point of 11 years old. Do you even…

and all the unbearable guilt. Itaewon The Sunday after, the alarm in my phone rung a heaviness that shifted all its aching into my hand. I texted everyone I knew, lives I was unsure were there or not. We take it for granted, this thing called living. Health, too. We…

scrap it, leave it, be a body be a verb. Whenever I see an article about a writing contract, I say, scrap a contract. A contract means all business and writing cannot be a business. It is an art. It is a means to bridging yourself to the world. Every…

speech act, killing teens, all about lily chou chou, los angeles i love you. As a teenager, a fantasy always appeared at the front steps of my heartache: a Volkswagen Mk1 GTI slowly pulling into my driveway so that a soft white light would seep through the blinds and flood…

all the ways i look back — As Lapvona hits bookstore shelves, I can’t help but wonder: Whatever happened to that one Moshfegh book that came before? The one with the least amount of traction. The one that most people disliked? The one forgotten. “Her name was Magda. Nobody will…

when was the last time you experienced art that transcended enjoyment and overwhelmed you with its power? Rice. The way steam rises from it like afternoon rain on a baked sidewalk, when it comes out in a metal tin bowl, hat and all, hot to the touch. Most Korean restaurants…

coming home — a story from january. America forgets. America happens, and then amnesic totality takes over. I’m headed towards history.

america sleeps, and there is blood in Ukraine. three peaceful people dead. the reporter emphasizes peaceful peace, full of it, a bounty, all of it. all the peace in three unmarked faces, gone. i imagine hands up, brave voices, gone in blinks, blind aggression. a reporter later adds, a child…