Hare Krishna Tree, Tompkins Square Park

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On Labor Day weekend 2021, I give my body to the ticks that live in the tall grass underneath the Hare Krishna tree and think, not freshly, of dying. It is the first clear morning in New York since the previous Saturday.

Hurricane Ida has been steadily barreling through the Northeast and, after a week of near-constant downpours, all my psychiatrist and I seem to talk about is the weather. I have always been used to the rain. When I lived in the tropics, everyone embraced it. The rain was a welcome distraction from the heat that lingered in our chests long after the sun had set. But the showers in North America are different from the ones in Southeast Asia. They are thinner, and far less forgiving. Like shards of liquid glass falling from an otherwise crystal blue.

I tell my psychiatrist that when I open my mouth up to the sky, I taste blood. She laughs and asks if the new dose of Zoloft she had prescribed last month was giving me any problems. I lie and say no because I don’t want to worry her. She has been working so hard and deserves much more than me. When our call ends, I roll over onto my stomach and contemplate a few ways to kill myself before the new year. While a bullet through the brain would be preferable, dropping a hair straightener into the bathtub is more economical. Lying face down in the street outside of my apartment is also a sure thing. The truth is that my dreams at night—always vivid—are growing increasingly more violent.

I can’t remember the last meal I have eaten that isn’t either a bowl of white rice topped with expired furikake or a stolen burrito from the pick-up counter of the Chipotle on East 8th Street.

My mother told me once that whatever happened in dreams, the opposite would occur in real life. This was back when we lived in Singapore by the Pan Island Expressway when I had started to have nightmares of shooting my father in the chest. I remember the way his face looked when he fell backward into the outdoor pool—the one my sister and I never swam in because it belonged to a family of red worms. I always woke up right before his body hit the water. The thing about storytelling is that it doesn’t matter whether it is real or not. You just need to believe something once to be haunted by it forever.

A frisbee cuts through the air of the park and lands in the scant array of shrubbery below my feet. A boy with floppy brown hair and the eyes of my rapist comes jogging by. He smiles at me innocuously, and I imagine what it would be like to have his body pressed against mine. Is he the kind of man who pictures women drenched in cum? What about the ones who imagine women drenched in blood? Has his spirit already been broken from the over consumption of porn starring Slavic teens in shipping crates? How many hours would pass before he would eventually grow bored of asking and decide it was infinitely easier to just take? He bends over to pick up the disc, and I recall a dream I had the other night where Andrew came back to me. When I woke up the next day, I laid down naked on the bathroom floor until I lost feeling in all of my limbs.

The boy picks up his frisbee and just as briskly as he entered my life he leaves it, like the stray dogs on your walk home that you coo at but that’s all. I watch him shrink into the distance, knowing I will never see him again. The thought of this fills me with an unexpected sadness.

I fantasize about what my life would look like if I had fucked Cian instead of Theo. Or Lucas instead of Sam. If I had swiped right on Paulie instead of Eric, would I still be haunted by thoughts of walking headfirst into the bus lane each time I emerge from the Union Square subway station? Or contemplating what it would feel like to reach my hand out and touch the third rail of the subway tracks?

There’s a moment in every young girl’s life when she realizes that the world is larger than the span of her mother’s outstretched arms.

A fly buzzes overhead. I think of reincarnating as a bird. The Buddhists believe that all the good deeds you amass during your lifetime will be carried over to the next. If you lead a horrible life, then your next one will be spent as an insect. If you lead an honorable one, you might come back as a tiger. The idea is to carry out your current existence with the following one in mind. And if you’re lucky, you will come back to earth as a human again. I couldn’t think of a worse fate.

A bolt of lightning flashes, casting a temporary glare across the park like the wrong ceiling light flickering on and off. When the rain comes I watch men, women, and dogs scatter like grains of rice spilled on a green kitchen island. Some of them turn to stare at me, perhaps wondering who I am. The space between my ribs gets punctured by water and their sympathy.

The boy with the frisbee ducks underneath a nearby awning with a younger, red-headed companion, and their laughs crack with the thunder. I smile, thinking to myself that the world was built for people like them. People who pick themselves out of bed each morning. People who have hobbies and talent and other people who call them.

Peering around at all the bodies surrounding me, I feel more alone than ever. Like a dog at the pound or a scar dug deep into the earth where ancient desires and those who bear them are buried.

Swallow a couple of your roommate’s Xanax. Have an affair or two. Let the boss stick a magnifying glass inside me and have a look around. Tell me what you see. But for now, you walk your body to St. Marks Place and pay ten dollars for yoga. Nurse an abdominal cramp that the instructor tells you is catharsis.

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Anyu Ching is a Singaporean writer and journalist based between Southeast Asia and the United States. The events depicted in this story reflect a challenging period in her life, but Anyu is glad to share that she has since found a new outlook on life—along with a higher Zoloft dosage. To read more of her work, visit anyuching.com.