Dear Reader

By Caroline Hung

Dear Reader,
​
Please consider my latest masterpiece, these ordinary words written between mental breakdowns and fits of jealousy. Please consider my morning cup of iced coffee, no sugars or cream needed. Please consider my anxieties, intrusive thoughts, and imagined scenarios, all horrific and violent and torturous and surely implausible. Please consider the plum rains. Please consider the thousands of people missing after Super Typhoon Yolanda hit Eastern Visayas in 2013. Please consider pork adobo for lunch. Please consider this sea bone on my desk; I broke it once and it never healed. Please consider geopolitical tensions in the West Philippine Sea. Please consider the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone. Please consider my fears and nightmares, Magnitude 9 earthquake, my phobias and neuroses, my weakness, incompetence, hopelessness, despair, delusions, and insignificance. Please consider my hypochondria. Please consider my desperation—but not my pain, please, anything but that. Please consider the moon rabbit’s song. Please consider the cotton candy cloud. Please consider these flowers, a loving arrangement of finger bones and cauliflower ears. Please consider my stories, my art, my work—I’m a writer, I’m a literary genius, please consider my trash. I am a Person of Color. Please consider my marginalization. I am Filipino. I am Taiwanese. Please consider more Filipinos and more Taiwanese. Please consider these rejection letters—thank you for your submission / but unfortunately / not a good fit / not quite right for us / nobody cares. Please consider the gatekeepers. Please consider the gargoyle in my room; she is the most gorgeous thing in the whole wide world. Please consider the fires. Please consider the war. Please consider the books, the folk tales, the daydreams and the love songs. Please consider my fantasy. Please consider an escape. Please consider this cry for help.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Caroline Hung writes smart, honest, certified organic and free-range speculative fiction. She has works in the oven currently and also in Strange Horizons, khoreo magazine, and more. Witness the trainwreck @cheeseanqi on Twitter/X or look at her stuff on carolinehungauthor.com.