By Chiu-yi Rachel Ngai, 16, Arkansas.
Lanterns bloom like flowers, the light and colour of crowded city streets.
Folded paper, a slinky of patterns,
Dancing as the candle flame flickers a pattern silhouette.
There are plastic lanterns these days, thick and rubbery with a strange smell,
Lit up with a mini LED bulb.
They come in all shapes and sizes, pop culture and cartoon designs.
Mickey Mouse, Power Rangers, Doraemon.
I remember my cousin had an Elsa once, a matching pair with her Anna-toting sister.
We met with mooncakes under a full moon,
Lotus paste sticky sweet, salted egg yolk seawater respite.
Our ancestors looked up at the same moon, and now we stand in their light—
A product of their mistakes and triumphs.
We stand tall, a proud new generation,
Eager to take on the world outside our Hong Kong,
Not knowing how much our bubble would change in the years that watched us grow.
I was fourteen when I left on a fifteen hour flight to the United States,
Creating a half-globe’s distance within my heart.
I write this at sixteen, a full lifetime for so many before me, a full lifetime for still too many.
Arkansas is American Southern, dry and green and different and not a bad place to be—
And yet I remain a daughter of the Asian East—
My bones do not feel like they belong.
I sat under the ever-present moon last Mid-Autumn, my second in the States,
Eating mooncakes gifted by my art teacher, the only other Chinese person I know in the area.
I look up to the sky, to the stars my cousins do not see, the stars drowned by neon light—
I look up to the sky, to the moon my family looked at thirteen hours ago, the moon my ancestors saw a woman’s story in.
The moon keeps me close to home.
By Chiu-yi Rachel Ngai, 16, Arkansas. She adds: "I grew up in the bustling streets of Hong Kong. I moved to the U.S.
when I was fourteen in order to get a better education. I am fluent in English and Cantonese. I can understand Mandarin/
Putonghua better than I can speak it. I am working on overcoming my internalized racism towards myself for being Chinese,
and I decided to submit to Skipping Stones as part of my journey towards accepting myself and finding pride and
joy in my cultural identity."
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