The night Ying Kit saw his first real on-screen kiss he decided to change his name. His parents weren’t home yet. In the dark kitchen the TV lit him blue as a ghost, as if Dawson and Joey could sense him watching. In his pocket he felt the letter he wanted but didn’t want to send Stacy. Instead he glimpsed her in science class through the neck of a test tube, pretending to measure volume. He stood far enough away so she couldn’t smell the slightest Chinese medicine on his clothes, like mothballs. My eyes are too small, anyway, Ying Kit thought as he ate another egg tart, suctioned its metal shell upwards with his hand. Like a spaceship. Ying Kit imagined gravity drained from his body. He made his hand into a fist and kissed it.
Lisa Low was born and raised in Maryland. Her poems have recently appeared in Washington Square Review, The Collagist, and Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. She lives in Bloomington, IN, where she is an MFA candidate at Indiana University.