March 2021

Editor's Note: Iris stands in solidarity with the APIDA communities at U.Va. and beyond. We are heartbroken by the act of hatred in Atlanta that took eight lives on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021, and send our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the victims. In response, we share this statement by the Women's Center and state unequivocally: anti-Asian racism has no place in Iris or in our world.

A soft recovery is vulnerable. Fragile bones in gaunt skin, delicate like egg shells, stress the word wan. Weak.

Another day waking up anxious. Eyes fluttering open are accompanied by a tight chest and a churning stomach. There are no butterflies. September to December brought a four month long writer’s block with one poem and a headache to show for it. Outside grows steadily darker, but the blinds on the bedroom have been broken. It’s been dark since 3:00 pm.  

“Why do you think you still have to stay there, after everything that’s happened?” my best friend whispers, her concern ringing out in this childhood bedroom. Nestling my head into the crook of my arm, I struggle to open my eyes, puffy and bloodshot from the evening. The phone rests dangerously warm against my cheek, still damp from this hours-long teary conversation. The question lingers, between her waiting, static, and the thick silence of doubt crawling its way into my twin bed. It creeps in like clockwork. I cling to its cold silhouette.

The Road Not Taken

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both”

- Robert Frost

Two sides of the same coin

Stuck on the edge

Between the grooves

Waiting to fall

Now I’ll go

Traveling through the path chosen

Opting to have another

Slowly cracking

Always does not mean

Forever

2:36 AM: “Well, you figured out how to start your fireplace while I was sitting there, and one month prior I was wondering when I would ever see you again. And now, here I am, three months of being hidden later, thrown away and cut off after promises of ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m always here’ were burnt to ash. Panic attacks at 5AM only further pissed me off. I was asked how silly I was, and the answer, then, was just enough. But I think the real question is how faulted am I to stand in the middle of a thunderstorm, in the middle of a field, and not expect to get hit by lightning?

I tear the crinkly green wrapper open as I’m stepping out of the CVS. Hands searching the smooth, plastic exterior for the tiny ribbed circle wheel in the upper right corner. The black and lime disposable camera is so light in my hands, I wonder how it can capture anything at all. People stream past me as I stand in the middle of the sidewalk, some floating lazily by and others running late. The camera is a waiting room for new memories to saunter in unexpectedly. Unreliably. And though it’s a brisk and airy morning, there’s not something worth capturing yet.

Does anyone else get how absurd it is? 

To hope, you have no choice but to do so wholeheartedly; it is faith and grace and courage, the heaviest and hardest, yet packaged as airy and leavened; it’s “the thing with feathers”, of course. 

Even just saying the word, it’s impossible not to open up your mouth and chest, letting out an exhale after.