By Gabriela V. Everett
She draws two boxes and says, here is the [present]
There, the [past]
then, below
An O between two, new boxes–empty–like a spotless, square-winged butterfly:
[ ]O[ ]
Here, the [present]—English—and there the [past]
“In Mandarin,” she points to the butterfly’s body, “there’s no past or present
tense for a word, but context,”
she points to the wings, “that tells us of time.”
She speaks to me of her life
Here: Nevada desert, long driveways and meandering walks
to the grocery store with zero greenery, no water, peopleless
Not like her childhood in Guangdong,
Where markets and lake sat steps away from home
And she could hear and see people all around
She says, “I’ve been here since age six,”
Meticulously corrects her tenses, plurals, and homework, erasing,
x-ing out grammatical miscalculations,
wondering about difference: threw and through
Here and there, then
and now
And reads smooth,
He swung the bat with all his might, then watched the ball fly, a homerun.
Gabriela V. Everett is a queer, mixed-race writer from Las Vegas. She possesses a BA in
Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her work appears in Hair Trigger, Allium,
Mulberry Literary, Dream Noir, and Glyph; her piece “Love Poems for Death” received Glyph’s
award for Best New Voice in 2016.
Hot Pot Magazine 