A poem by 2024 Young Writer in Residence Sherry Zhang.

1. My favourite beige activity is 2048. I started playing on a 12 hour long flight before my 24th birthday. These transient spaces become forced group meditation. I usually let my death anxiety spiral. This time, I let my arms cramp up while swiping those gobbling numbers.
2. I think moons are also kind of beige. Long summer dusks, the wisp of sunscreen smudged against blue. The crescent in the space between a lover’s cheek and eyelash. Moon songs and love songs are two of the same breath (ah~)
3. Beige foods include Harvest Pea Snaps. Good mouth feel. Tasty polystyrene. Sour Cream and Chives Pringles. Salted duck egg and pork congee. Fried tomato and seaweed soup. Umami. 
4. I love listening to the same song on repeat for hours sometimes. Something with atmospheric doof doof beats, and wishy washy lyrics. 
5. Beige friends are the ones you sit with. You talk and laugh with. You exist in silence and do life admin with. You lie on opposite sides of the bed, mindlessly scrolling Tiktok in an attempt to reset the nervous system with.  
6. It’s not a flex but I’m currently at 16384. It is a flex. I want you to cheer for me. 
7. I go soul searching, travelling up and down the west coast of North America by train. I’m not sure I found myself. I should have been meditating but I just spent hours playing 2048. 
8. I’m a baby bay baby. But not like a nepo-baby. I’m just the youngest cousin, so baby beyblade baby.
9. My favourite beige friendships operate exclusively at pools. We small talk while aqua jogging. If the conversation gets too deep, too soon, we’ll start racing laps. It’s hard to talk about your feelings when underwater. Panting tired, we’ll sit in the steam room. A festering space demanding singular focus. Finally, like mirror twins to the wrinkly Asian aunties in the spa pool, we’ll start sharing our woes.
10. My psychiatrist keeps calling me intelligent, but it feels more like a back-hand insult than anything. My high school principal called us Asians: mysterious smart robots.
11. Argh! You’re my shrink. I came to you because I wanted to be told my worth is more than my output. I’m not doomed or wrong or fundamentally fucked. 
12. I know I’m intelligent. Yet I’m still infantilised in every space I occupy. I can’t seem to logic my way out of this. At some point, it becomes weaponised to racially subjugate others for the benefit of White supremacy. 
13. You prescribe me exercise, vegetables and fish oil. 
14. You say I’m a young queer girl stuck between two cultures. Guess I’ll wait to turn into a muscle-mommy-jock with powerful thighs to straddle this cavern for the rest of my life. My teenage back-ne transforming into dark purple duck feathers, so guilt/shame/filial piety glosses off. Cool cool cool, I’m waiting for my evolution. For the post diaspora-poetry era. 
15. What I struggle with is rage. These days, I go straight to defeat. I haven’t learned how to hold rage in my veins and let it glow. Little girls who grow up with angry Dads and avoidant Mums go one of two ways. So I get acid reflux, turn my insides into stone, and survive. 
16. I’m scared of my own anger. It is so large and big. But like a black wormhole, it had nowhere to go except back inside. I taught myself to flop and suppress. To punish thyself to feel something. To smile serenely, lobotomy. 
17. Every report card states ‘she is an obedient, sensible, sweet Chinese girl.’ When does resentment transform into vengeance? My age is bigger than the size of my pink light up sneakers. Am I big and scary enough for my tantrums to save me now? 
18. My body forgets I’m not in that house anymore. Phantom sun spots in the retinas spinning dizzy. 
19. Once, a teacher put a sticker on my nose and told me ‘you are enough.’ It made me weep like an ancient earthen clay pot.  
20. I’m probably burnt out. It’s listed on my medical records. 
21. The antidepressants they put me on make me feel like I’m pinging, and it’s hard to go to work in a glass office building when it feels like you’re rolling. 
22. I’m a girl with beige thoughts. Sometimes sad thoughts. But generally soft beige outlook and disposition. 
23. I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince more these days, but it’s feeling less believable and more slippery. 
24. I’ve deleted 2048. 
25. I turn 25, and I install Pokemon Go. I want to fight. 

This poem was written for ‘Bad Apple – The Showcase’

The Friday Poem is edited by Hera Lindsay Bird. Submissions are now open. Please send up to three poems in a PDF or Word document to info@thespinoff.co.nz