The first earthquake you ever experienced woke you up, rumblings underneath like the ones that sometimes happen in your heart. A light pounding that has almost become soothing, a swaying greeting from the morning, reminders of life in a secret language only you and the earth can share. Sometimes, you want to fracture and slip and break and shake too.
You reach out to your sides, hands flat against the bed because you cannot remember what it feels like to be still, be calm, be quiet. Can movement be noisy but not loud, sifting through a scuffle so light it’s heavy? You look at the leaves on your plants the same way they tell you to look at doorknobs in a dream because you’ve started forgetting real from natural from fact. If they are moving, you tell yourself, then this is not you. They dance like there’s breeze, little metronomes off-rhythm but so lost in each other, a consumption that pulls you in for just long enough before pushing you away. She’s not like us, they whisper to each other, not hearing me as I beg them, please, teach me how to be free.
You hear the news trickle in slowly and then immediately, a bilingual stream of consciousness fed by information so overloaded you worry whether your brain circuitry will become a fire hazard. Quickly, you look for that waltz of the leaves, eyeballs clutching for any kind of reminder that you are clear of the brain fog, free of your own neurotic pollution, absolved of the sin that comes with living a double life. When you were five years old, you grew too exhausted to maintain the world in your mind so you opened the door and never looked back; this is liberation, you said, not realizing that it was really the absolute click of a lock. Nicely wrapped around your understanding of truth, it sits and hums to itself. You are angry until you are proud; it is, after all, doing an exceptional job.
The leaves do not move, but you see them holding in their breath. You wonder whether they’re also frozen in fear, paralyzed in a silence that they’ve never known before. You want to ask them, what do you look at when you are not sure what is real? You try to forget its name because maybe then you can take away some of its life but there are chants and choruses propelling it in every direction.
You avert your eyes, thinking you can purge it out of your life, out of everyone’s lives, but the loss of one of your senses only grows the others.
It is only a few days that pass before you realize your sense of touch has heightened. Under the covers, you slide your hands down your body gently. And suddenly, you remember the first time you did this, scared and tense like the staccato of a language you hear for the first time, and you feel grateful you’ve learned. Learned how to touch the different crevices in your body, valleys and mountains you push and press sometimes with rapid urgency, sometimes with a hunger so strong you scream. Tender with the longing of a love letter filled with cursive strokes and familiarity, your fingers bring you to the edge before they stop — a tease just as much as a warning. Don’t you want to hold onto this feeling? You are insatiable, but determined, and competition begins. There is excitement and anticipation and a warmth that cycles through your chest, stretching into your leg like a hug that you can still feel hours later. Toes curling, breath growing shorter and shorter, you can feel the tightness of your skin meet the soft sheets until you cannot help but release. Eyes still closed, you decide this is the moment you have fallen in love with your body.
You wake up the next morning and make yourself some tea, because you like to see the leaves dance in the water too. You pick up your mug and listen to the news and realize that you have been burned — fingertips only slightly warmed but heart aflame with rage, you know now that they have stolen from you, stripped you of a love so genuine you can still feel it in your throat. You hear them call it Chinese, and you wince. How can you give away my body, you say to them softly. You say it again, this time thundering in clarity, thinking maybe they did not hear you at first. They can, and choose not to listen. You feel more naked now than you did when you were underneath the covers. There is anger first, then denial as you hear them call it dirty and uncivilized; this is when you accept that the only acceptance you will have is that this grief will follow you everywhere. How can you shame my body, you want to scream, but you know you will never be louder than them. You pace back and forth when suddenly you hear them call it a worldwide threat, and you swear, you’ve heard that somewhere before.
It is a week later but you do not remember the time passing; you begin to question whether or not you are trapped in a VHS tape someone keeps rewinding and fast-forwarding, not sure where the right place to stop is, but before you can think of an answer, you hear 宝贝，你怎么样？身体好吗？It is so unrestrained that all you can hear now is your own voice cracking, and you realize this is the beginning of your earthquake. Fissures and schisms and a splintering so big that it makes another ocean between you two; you think to yourself that at least you have enough tears to fill it.
Crossing the street into Chinatown, you find it odd how borders can be made in almost no time, invisible barriers signaled on cracks of sidewalk and arbitrary markings. You remember being a child and pretending the floor was lava; jumping from cushion to table to ottoman to cushion to table to ottoman, you never thought about how furniture would never withstand such heat anyways. You never thought that one day you would be the lava. In the middle of the intersection sits two giant trees, branching out almost in agony. Are they trying to push these worlds away or are they trying to keep them together, you ask, wondering where they belong, or if they care, or if they know. The wind blows, and its leaves oscillate from side to side to up to down to backwards telling you, this is how you can be free. For the next twenty minutes, you decide to walk with no direction in mind, desperately trying to erase the boundaries around your body.
It is the first time you’ve eaten alone in almost a year, and your food taunts you, almost daring you to tell others about how good it tastes because it knows nobody will believe you. Picking up your chopsticks, you decide in that moment that you never wanted to tell anyone anyways, hide this secret so deeply in your chest that it will grow roots around your heart and gardens down your spine. In that moment, you know it doesn’t actually matter because the ghosts have already seen you, and they smile. By their side, they carry out your favorite dishes, riddled with savory oils and colorful spices; ginger and garlic and greens in endless supply — you eat until you cannot feel your stomach and then you eat some more. Fill up your reserves because in a quarantine you wonder how much flavor you will forget, taste slipping away from your reservoir of knowledge like the water flowing through your fingers. You devour the ma-la dishes hoping the numbness will devour you instead, pleading for a moment suspended in an escapism so strong that you will always remember. Pressing the peppercorns into your tongue, marking it with a burn that feels more like a hug, you swallow fire. Breathe out lightning bolts and flames that dance the same way the leaves do. The ghosts disappear and emerge once again, this time holding plates filled with jidan bing. This was the last meal you had in China when you were eleven, but time has not aged this memory. You feel full in a different kind of way, and keep eating. Suddenly, you remember the face of the man who stood outside your grandparents’ apartment selling milk and fruit and you wonder how he is; where he is, when he is, if he is. You try and speak to the ghosts, but they do not reciprocate. Instead, they begin to laugh. Sitting in an empty room with chairs tucked in, untouched in weeks in a way so familiar it does not need to be explained, you somehow feel less alone than you have in years.
When you were six years old, you tried to use laundry detergent as shampoo because the smell of linen made you feel graceful and light when all you ever knew was heavy and slow. When you were nine years old, your mom took you to the candle store where you realized money was the magic power that could buy you this feeling forever. One by one, you picked up candles and tucked their scents in the folds of your body, filing them away so chaotically it became a euphoria too catastrophic. You do not remember fainting in the store, only coming to consciousness, although you can never really be sure what really happened. This was one of the first times your brain decided to give you the silent treatment, a cold shoulder so dark it was deafening. Don’t you know how to be delicate with yourself, it asked quietly.
Soon, you wipe and spray everything down once, then twice, then three times, then seven times until the scent of linen and laundry and ocean and clean fogs up your glasses in the same way a warm bowl of soup does; you know you want to consume it, so you know you must apologize — send flowers and handwritten notes to your brain, cross the oceans, climb the tallest mountains, scream from the wilderness so loudly that it will last long enough to be captured. You know you must make a home-cooked breakfast, let the music boil until it is steaming, fill the house with a sunlight so warm that even the leaves will be on your side; you know you must apologize. You wonder how you can be delicate if you were never taught what that even meant.
Soon, you wash your hands — once, then twice, then three times, then seven times — and you realize you don’t feel graceful and light at all, or heavy and slow. You are not sure if you feel at all.
It is a week later but you do not remember the time passing; you begin to question whether or not you are trapped in a VHS tape someone keeps rewinding and fast-forwarding, not sure where the right place to stop is, but before you can think of an answer, you are riding in your company-expensed Lyft through the city, locking eye contact with those who cannot hide, expressions muddled by tinted windows and the beginning of a class war — you never let yourself wonder what will happen to them, not because you don’t want to know the answer, but because you already have it. You used to think that a home is a people, not a place; now, you realize that a home is a sanctuary because to the rest of the world, it is a home that makes you a people. You understand now that money is not a magic power; it is just power. Your driver tells you about very important celebrities you’ve never seen and athletes that play sports you’ve never watched, and you are impressed with your ability to pretend to care, vocal ticks and small talk paced strategically for every mile until you get home. Before you exit the car, you tell your driver about someone very important too — he asks you who it is, worried to hear a name he will recognize, and you tell him it does not matter. Everyone is very important to someone.
Every night before you go to sleep, you take three big breaths as if you’re suffocating because you do not want to forget you are alive. You listen for the earth’s rumblings and wonder if maybe the earth is ever listening for yours. The next morning, your world shakes. You reach out to your sides, hands flat against the bed because you cannot remember what it feels like to be still, be calm, be quiet. Can movement be noisy but not loud, sifting through a scuffle so light it’s heavy? You look at the leaves on your plants the same way they tell you to look at doorknobs in a dream because you’ve started forgetting real from natural from fact. If they are moving, you tell yourself, then this is not you. They are still asleep, paused and snoozing and motionless as a way to say, this is a rumbling reminder of your own anxiety. You will never forget that there are many different kinds of health, that you do not have care for any one of them.
Today, you fracture and slip and break and shake and decide, it is your turn to dance for the leaves.