i am turning sixteen and gathering the facts from the sun

i. in new york: you are born small. which is a given, but you are unhealthily smaller than most. the doctors fear for you, and tell this to your mother. they are scared you will not survive, but like the headstrong little pest you’ve always been, you grow.

ii. and you grow with the sun in your palms and your temples, and it shows in the way the sun kisses your skin. you love to run: mom says you couldn’t get enough of it. you are deathly shy, but every friend you’ve had ended up clinging to you, like the way a flower wraps itself protectively so it can face the sky. you like dinosaurs a lot, too—can recite part of an encyclopedia about the herbivores.

iii. and you get older, and your mom gets sick. breast cancer doesn’t mean much to a kid as young as you, you just know that mom is fragile and your triceratops plushie shouldn’t be thrown around lest it hit her and hurt her. but mom watched power rangers in the hospital with you, and she gets better, so you think everything is alright.

iv. in texas, you go to a baptist elementary school, and just as usual, you make friends that dote on you and tell you that you smell good. and you love them, but you also notice that their skin is pale, that their hair is golden. and you think your eyes are a tad bit funny. and one day, you pray to stop looking like yourself, and to look a whole lot more like them.

v. you are still very, very fast. you’re the fastest kid in the grade, actually. and your teachers have begun talking about how whip-smart you are. your pre-k teacher sends you to go read a book to the first graders, and you stumble over words, but it was whatever, because you loved the story, anyway. your mom is very, very happy with how the teachers talk about you.

vi. and you outgrow that school, and the teachers know it too. your mom moves you in the fifth grade to a charter school that’s known for making kids cry with how challenging it was. even today, you still go there, and you must agree, but you do your best to shine. and you think you do. (you want to go to an ivy-league, so.)

vii. you stop hating the way your hair was ink-black and your skin a light brown. you like the word “asian” instead of cringing at it. you realize how cruel people are, and now you have words for it: racist, misogynist, islamophobic. now that you can articulate this, you are so, so angry that more people don’t talk about these things. you probably started becoming an activist that day.

viii. you write stories with plot holes so huge they could fit how big your laughter is. you write poems that rhyme in awkward ways. you write, quite a bit, and you think it is your voice. and it’s because of this that you’re able to list these things:

ix. you love your friends. you love telling them that you love them. when one of them texts you that they are unimaginably sad, you feel the pain like it is your own. and you think they care for you in different ways, but it is love all the same. and you love your friends you think your love may be too much.

x. you adore people. you’ve said this before, but someone else’s pain is your own. you are in love with so many parts of life that the parts that are ugly make you so angry. which is funny, because it leads to you getting even more angry when you fight random people on the internet about this.

xi. (and you write, not just for your own enjoyment or release or expression, but because some of the less fortunate do not have the opportunity that you do to fearlessly speak out against the things you don’t believe in and for the things that you do.)

xii. you like taking walks in your neighborhood while listening to music. you hit tables and cling to people when you laugh. you have that awful sense of humor, the devilish, cheeky brat kind, because you love aggravating your dearest friends until they laugh at you or start hitting you. you are learning ukelele because you want to write the people you love the songs you think they deserve. you like fashion: pretty outfits, pretty things. you like soccer, and being a striker, and nailing balls into the goal from the midfield line. you learn things so, so fast because you can’t stand not being good at them. you still have stuffed animals on your bed.

xiii. you still run fast. not physically, sometimes, though—getting more competitive in soccer meant that you met people much faster than you. but no, you’re fast in other ways, and sometimes, you’re afraid nobody will catch up with you. and you’ll be running alone.

xiv. and the sun wanes away, sometimes. dips beneath the horizon so low and so long that you think you’ll never feel it again. but you find people, like you always do. and they cling to you like flowers, and despite not knowing their faces or voices for a long while, you love them all the same.

xv. and you love them, and you thank them, for loving you, mostly, but also for existing. for writing things that made you happy, or made you feel like you could slow down, sometimes. for reminding you that the world is still worth loving. and that you are, too. it just needs to learn to spin as fast as you run. but anyways, you love them, and that’s that.

xvi. and you turn sixteen years old, and you are scared of growing older, but it’s been a long time coming. a sweet, sweet sixteen. and you will run fast, still, whatever that may mean. so you promise to grow with the sun in your palms.

but for now, you’d just like to enjoy your birthday.