How Problematic is voluntourism?

Celebrities posing next to orphans in Cambodia. Groups of tourists teaching English to students in Costa Rica. Teens digging wells in Kenya. Especially among social media users, the voluntourism industry — where tourists travel to foreign countries to volunteer and “improve” the conditions of that place — has become increasingly enticing. People are constantly found […]

yellow spiders

“A spider’s bag the rest, from which she gives a thread, and still by constant weaving lives.” – Ovid my web is made from juice in my abdomen. the bitter taste of neglect lingers in my mouth before i create patterns of words undeserving of your second glance. they are like cat hair on wool, […]

Last Day of Summer

“I dare you to ask someone for gum.” My eyes widened and I scanned the trail for any approachable dog-walkers, but saw nobody. “That’s unfair, there’s nobody here!” Ella and Sophia giggled and continued kicking the dirt path, scouring their minds for a better one. The last hours of summer camp were rapidly approaching, so […]

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at my dinner table

i. in summer i suck oil from the fried skin of duck breast 北京烤鸭 mama whispers to me. i struggle to say it back. ii. dirt green and electric cyan stare at me from the shoe cabinet. all six sizes too big. sister drops the unwanted pairs but my ankle still juts from the slipper […]

everything is grey

but above blends blue bleeds white clouds of sponge yearning for silver folded into sky and by the rolling hills of dull-soot fly seagulls skimming the edge of waves. they plunge and crease into self as fires expunge the past. white lines snaking between blue dye. wind leads and rain trails bare feet dashing by– […]

A Climate Crisis is Very Real and Very Near

Living in our Silicon Valley bubble, our presumptions of climate change and how it affects our lives are drastically different from reality. In the summer, the temperature soars over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, while in the winter time, there’s a shortened ski season due to less snowpack

I Can’t Read!

“What are you gonna get?” My family stood at the back of the store, behind the line of customers waiting to order. The seemingly simple question forced hundreds of thoughts through my head as I redirected my attention to the menu before us. Images of refreshing smoothies decorated the pink walls and AC blasted from […]

Vivisepulture

In the morning, you sat patiently in my lap, trying to forget the California heat burning into your white fur and lowered vampire eyes. Your ears perked for a second when my ten-year-old hands pulled you onto the tiled bathroom floor of an air-conditioned basement you hadn’t been in before. But your body, sluggish and […]

perennial spring

the sky is frozen at dawn, masked by gray smokescreens drifting down the neighbors’ sloped rooftops and hovering between the tips of budding lemon trees. a ghost’s breath emerges from my set of parched lips, that i imagine as the hydrangea’s sweet blush rising from my neck, when i reach my fingers towards the fading […]

sister

i was six when i blew out my candles and wished that i was Peter Pan and you were Wendy Darling. for a year, you still laughed with me when we threw out our veggies and watched them swirl in the toilet and hid under the bunk bed that we shared. then you asked for […]