While It Lasts
by Amy Shin
New York University
Amy Shin is an undergraduate student at New York University, majoring in English on the creative writing track. Born in Korea and raised in Hong Kong, she enjoys exploring the politics and poetics of transgenerational memory through the fractured, budding life of Korea from the twentieth century onwards.
We conduct our poops beside one another in solidarity
four girls with crusty eyelashes and synchronized bowel movements
giggling as in cackling as in belting
Whitney Houston infused with morning breath, yesterday’s bok choy jumping
in for percussion as staccato
plops ricochet in the toilet bowl,
orchestrating our wake-up playlist through a thin mahogany wall.
The Chinese national anthem erupts in the room next door.
起来！起来！起来！ which translates to get the fuck up.
A groan. Someone gets dress-coded for cutting her skirt two inches high
and shuffles back to the landfill of her closet. Someone scribbling her friend’s math
homework in the living room toothpaste dribbling down
her chubby chin onto a dampened quadratic formula.
Someone
tap-tap-tapping her leather shoes by the door, fearing the char siu bao
might sell out. Someone
snoring eyes half open. As the sun stretches
across our windowpanes, we emerge one pound lighter,
resilient as ever, foreheads iridescent beneath the bathroom light.
By lunchtime the group chat is ding - ding -
dinging with hot wasian boy alerts ass growing tutorials
frisbee schedules missing sock sightings Taobao prom dress
ideas and interrogations on Who Ate My Yogurt…
But must I remind you?
Your grizzly snores are my grizzly snores
Your tampons my tampons
Your breakup my breakup
Your baggy jeans my skinny jeans lounging
somewhere on the peanut butter-stained couch.
When night falls, we get tipsy on orange juice and crouch beneath
a crinkled Hello Kitty blanket
flashlights on pants off
we explore what it means to be a woman;
I wonder why my mother
told me to turn my back and close my eyes
when we went into the cubicle together.
It’s loud over here.
Soak in the soothing cacophony of hormonal children
singing 童话 in the closet a lisp from their retainers the squeals
of stuffing sweaters into pants
for a Kim K complexion the foreboding sound of penny boards zig
zagging
across the scratched-up floor
Yet tonight we sleep with legs
entangled huddled on one sunken bed mel
ting into the comforting weight of four bodies
breathing in sync
to the sound of glow in the dark stars
fluttering
down the ceiling
☆ piece
by ☆
☆ piece.
☆