cutting great neck

It’s like I’ve just transported back to this period of, of utter friendlessness, and hopelessness and meaninglessness, this depression, when my father had cancer and I didn’t really care what happened; when I was all alone and afraid and abhorred by society; when I had few cares, but so many strong, redundant worries; when I was a child, a child that did not understand adulthood. The summer of 2005... the summer of 2006... the spring of 2007...


a period of misunderstandings, of strange, discontented loneliness and isolation... i lived in a world different than my own—a newcomer thrice, a stranger in a strange land... unconnected and invisible, attempting to connect and enabling myself to be seen, rather colorfully.


i felt not in control, alone—unknowing to the furious, political, sexual world that revolved around me, the world that i, unlike others, did not discern. i had for long known that i was strong, personally, even back then; a strange, lurid child, an oddity to his relatively new home(s).

not depression, really—merely obliviousness, a forbidding futureless prospect, of miserable realizations and dull, aching understandings.

harry potter was my world... it guided me through my deepest dilemmas, followed me through my highest obstacles, and then led me through my small, teen-sized triumphs. the boy who lived—a crucial vehicle for my writing, for my learning, for my reading—had allowed me to discover english, to fall in love with english—and even more so, with language in general.

harry potter was the vestibule into my solitude, and into my happiness. i can trace the major turning points of my life by the books; i remember waiting for my grandmother to arrive with the fifth installment in december 2003, because i could not yet read english—it was a month after we had moved—and i remember in the e.s.l school library in san jose, taking the book out and then sitting next to my mother in the living room of our temporary house, throwing a tantrum because she didn’t read it right, didn’t translate the words to me like i wanted her to... in july 2005, waiting at midnight with guy z. at border’s, a month before my move to san diego, the first harry potter i would be able to read in english the first read... and then, in july 2007—standing in line, britt and sarah and i think james and deanna... i can’t quite frankly remember... in barnes & noble, waiting... me—the same me as now, a person whom i can today recognize, a person who—

--who was not entirely oblivious, not wholly futureless, a person who understood...

and then, it stopped. it was horrifying. there would be no more stories to guide me, no more books to live with me, no more characters to grow up with me... i felt—i feel—alone again, mistrustful, dejected... even friendless. throughout my moves, throughout my life, from the third grade on, there was always harry, there was always ron, there was always hermione...

and it has taken me a year and a half—nearly two harry-less years—for me to finally, silently, sorrowfully, understand the deep and scarring consequences of the series’ conclusion.

as if she was here—her ghost. grandma was
supposed to, and now it appears as if
she walks the neighborhood streets, as if
she had come: that black shadow, swallowed
by the fumbling silhouettes of tree-trunks,
heaving, toddling across the street from me,
might be her long-lost phantom, or maybe
our ancestor’s relative who fled on a distant
ship towards america. as i watch it approach
me, that old toddling body—a symptom, a relic
from a broken hip—i feel what those who’ve lost
someone and then were reminded of them
must feel, must undergo when a familiar feature
is exhibited: a pang through lungs; as if she
is here, a dead woman walking—though
she’s not dead, thank god, she’s not dead yet.