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Personal Note:
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Poem

I had a dream last night. When I looked into the mirror, I was wearing a denim mid-skirt with boots, and a dramatic yellow top with feathers—things I would never wear, least of all on a steaming summer day. I looked around and found myself on the dock, where my grandparents live in Keelung, Taiwan. My father’s ship departed from here when he was a marine; My mother would stand on the squeaky wooden platform as he left. The wind was damp and chilling—it’s always raining here, at my grandparents’. I used to hate it as a child, but I had a distinct memory from when I was an infant: when I cry, my father would take me to the bathroom and open the rain shower—the sound of rain would quiet me down, then my memory would black out. I guess I fell asleep...

A high-pitch note 
———cut—through
 my memory like shears. 

I’m back on the dock, in denim skirt and boots and that funny yellow top. Then I saw her, a siren. I thought of her yesterday, when she surfaced in my poem. I've seen her before, once, in what I thought was hallucination. Her hair in a quaint braid, draped over one shoulder. Her skin aquamarine, so delicate I think I saw the veins underneath—but no blood was flowing. And her eyes—oh, her eyes—they were a milk-like off-white. A color somehow both calming and chilling. She hummed from somewhere deep in the sea. So far out I couldn’t have seen or heard, let alone fear her—Yet I did. Her voice coiled around my throat like a silent collar, ready to claim what once was mine—Suddenly she's in front of me. I tried to fight back, but what can one do when her vocal cords were ripped out brutally? So thin, those fragile cords. And yet, they alone stood between me and my voice. I wanted to grab them and stuff them back into my throat, but—she smiled like an innocent carol, then devoured them in front of me. My arms dropped. I nearly collapsed, but her touch froze me up right. Her lifeless touch sealed my bleeding wound, then my throat, then my mouth then nostrils then the rest of my limped body. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe—

Then I woke up,
cold sweat soaked my hair.
I still couldn’t breathe.
I reached for my throat—
she actually took my voice.
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