“A river, wanting to go downhill

will carve new tributaries,

tear through homes,

flood the roots of trees.

The therapist tells you your mind

is swollen with doom

that carries you in its white rush,

torrents ripping through

rock and root.

I don’t know in what direction love pulls me.

But I do know the feeling of the muscle in your chest flailing

for fear of drowning.

At Minnehaha, a young Southeast Asian couple asked me

to take their picture.

Cambodian, or Lao, or Thai, or Viet.

He was heavily tattooed and looked like the dudes

who would have whooped my ass just for breathing,

back in the day.

She had dyed hair,

looked like the girls who dismissed me

as a pasty, boring little sellout back then.

They’re the most gorgeous couple in the park.

If it sounds like I’m making assumptions about them and me,

I am,

and it’s not okay

just because I’m Asian too.

They like the picture I take for them.

The creek and the falls are swollen from the rains.

The same that have deluged basements,

dips in the road,

drowned park benches too close to the lake shore.

Each raindrop doesn’t care

if it’s the one to soak in

or the one that stays above it all to flood.

They just throw themselves on top of each other

until they become bigger than who they were

when they were apart.”