Uni-lateral
.
Tinnitus burps in my right ear, a song of fire and smoke. The lights are neon-dim, club variety, striking the walls with haphazard loops. I can’t hear.
My lover went to buy a Heineken. I saw her pink nails disappear behind the bar, underneath the ragged jeans of a short butch. I knew her screams muted, electronic frenzy, slamming into the feeble stall doors.
It hurts to look at these screens, of pink women and yellow figures screamdancing to white noise. I heard police sirens and the scratchy throat of a whistle, but it was just a song. i can’t hear, i can’t think, i can’t do, my friends scream at me over the noise, balancing poppers in glib hands, do you want some, i don’t know, i can’t hear or smell or think or do anything but
we were driving in the old Toyota Sequoia, and my mother was hitting every bump of the road consciously, as if to flatten the world out, hollow it down.
“It needs to be even,” she muttered, “uniform”, and then she looked at me.
Noise.
Doja Cat begins to blare. The world breaks apart in maroon discord.
We were supposed to go on a picnic then, where the wild radishes bloom ferociously, devouring entire hillsides. My mother had packed onigiri and water, and my siblings ambled out to the brown bubbling creek waters. I stayed in the car; I was afraid.
Her face had curled then, into an eloquent sneer that writ itself into her forehead, the knuckles of her eyes. My mother had a face that was made for work, and she often looked at me without pity.
i can’t hear, i can’t think, i can’t do anything, i
would like to dance with a blue and yellow woman, strutting against her in this rose-pink moonlight. I want to kiss the petals away from her glittery silver eyes, make her bloom for me in this wicked, starburnt night. I want to make her eggs and toast in the morning; I want her to ghost me; I want a story to tell to friends.
“Oops,” she giggles, the woman of my dreams. She has spilled Pabst Blue Ribbon onto these white slacks and needily, I turn away. I imagine that these vibrant stains are blood, that I am bleeding again, you have become a woman now, that old, tiring, fear.
And we are driving back from the picnic, and my siblings are sleeping, tired. My mother looks at me with those nighttime eyes.
“You are still a girl, Mei-chan.” I was struck by the resonant disappointment in her voice, as if I could not grow up fast enough for her liking.
and now I stand awkwardly in a dubstep prism of light and sound and color. I wonder if this is what my mother would have wanted for me, if she would have been proud of me now. all of the loneliness and hatred and beguiling echoes of a long past ago…
知らない[1].
____________________
[1] Japanese for “I don’t know”. Roughly pronounced as shiranai. Nuances of meaning depends on vocal delivery.
Yuna Kang is a queer, half-deaf, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She loves postcards, crows, and cats. Yuna is also the recipient of the 2024 New Feathers Award. Their website link is: https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/website
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