Noon in Chinatown on a Sunday

I order shrimp shumai as

groups of tourists talk loudly

their laughter amplifies my solitude

 

I absently pick up my chopsticks

to have something to fidget with

watch the steam rise from

a clay cup of oolong tea

if melancholy had a fragrance

it would be in the glass bottle

of this moment

 

my body feels limp, overcooked spaghetti

my mind is a dense fog I get lost in

something rises within my broken chest

and cannot be pressed down to rest

 

this pain is introspective

my interior is like a room that 

has not been aired out

I throw open the window inside

and sit on the floor and look

 

I was dutifully crawling

ignoring my heart

numbing the thoughts with falsities

and now everything is real

 

I sit over my dim sum and cry

 

in the springtime of my tears

I cannot help but feel

a slight pleasure

to suffer so sincerely 

from mental torment

to allow the ache so fully

 

lucid clarity in a week of sleepwalking

I am no longer a closed box of a woman

but shaped and rounded by experience

I weep and I feel

the world can touch me again

 

Roxanne Noor is a first-generation American currently living naked on an island. Her work can be found in Cathexis Northwest, Nymphs, Sunstroke Magazine, Anti Heroin Chic, Uplift Connect, Nude Studio, Full Potential, and others. Roxanne is involved in the messy brilliance of the human experience while giving space to the wisdom of higher consciousness. Connect with Roxanne here.