fitting inside a sphere an abrupt landing, i feel my feet hit grass and on a moonlit airfield– a silver plane touches down on tarmac. first time in a foreign city, adapting to a new culture, a new language– my body readjusts, my brain reinvents. try to fit a triangle inside a sphere, i’m out of place, out of my comfort zone. in this small town, my three-dimensional points poke out like the arms of a starfish. directionless–tell me where to go next. i am human—dying to evolve— who am i really in this skin? assimilation is a slow process like squeezing into a pair of skinny jeans, tight at first, but after a bit of sweat and struggle, it fits and now i have to walk in them. White Lies Baking in the white of winter, flour and powder, vanilla splotches on our aprons, a snowfall in the kitchen. Our cake on the countertop represents life in layers. A first layer of bread on top, a coat of cream in the middle, a second layer of bread on the bottom. Our triumphs and failures stacked on top of each other. We fight for a seat on the top tier, nose-dive two stories down, skin our knees, bruise our chins. We are squished, veins and joints on the verge of snapping in a claustrophobic town, sandwiched between a sky on top, an ocean on the bottom. Some rainbow sprinkles, an eruption of color might jazz up our moods, stifle our discomfort. We decorate our cake with frosting, feed each other lies over cups of cold milk and sugar cubes, tell ourselves life is oh so sweet. Our objective is to keep from dropping in water, from drowning. Ha Kiet Chau is a writer from Northern California. Her chapbook, Woman, Come Undone, is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press. http://hapoetryblog.tumblr.com/