writings

Words and Images By Josh Shiau - New York, New York

ode to new york

on the ride home
i’m waiting for the light to change
when a fall wind pushes two honey-locust leaves
with their flirts and flourishes
tracing around my bike basket

i start thinking about all the far-off places
i used to chase
the lonely ones,
the ones that felt like they were mine
just because they were hard to get to
or because no one looked at me like i belonged there.

And now here, the opposite.
If the world were to meet itself anywhere,
it would be here.
Each path worn by millions,
dead, alive, passing through.

like the endless flickering leaves
flit and fluttering off
the branches year after year

finally the light changes
and we all go.

i showed up to the date 

a little wrecked 
sweaty from biking over the bridge, 
dodging traffic, tourists, 
every goddamn thing this city throws at you 
when you insist on pedaling through it 
like a fool with something to prove.
i asked her if my hair looked alright. 

she looked at me, deadpan, 
and said,  “how would i know? 
i’ve never seen you before in my life.”

went to my friend’s place to do laundry

same friday routine.
at the bottom of her basement stairs
lay a flat, dead cockroach
a real monument to the week.

i figured she didn’t want to touch it,
so i said i’d grab it.

she shrugged, said her plan
was to let it rot there.

but things don’t rot on dry concrete.
they just stay.
like the rest of us.

A meditation on pain

Nerve pain cuts out the middleman. No sore muscles, no irritated skin - just a direct strike to the brain. Mine flickers between a low, electric burn and a sudden jolt that feels engineered to override every other thought. The shingles run along my C2 nerve, straight across the scalp. Nothing to amputate. Nothing to escape. Just the clean, primitive fact of it.

Pain is supposed to be information, but that theory collapses in a dark room at 4 a.m. When the shocks hit, the silence makes them louder. My legs twitch on their own, like the body is trying to eject whatever voltage it can’t handle. I know I’m not dying. I know it will end. But knowledge doesn’t negotiate with sensation, it only keeps you from screaming.

What interests me is how universal pain is, and how useless that universality becomes. Some inherit it through poverty, injury, bad odds. Others get it despite every boon. Avoiding pain doesn’t make you stronger - it makes you fragile. Sheltering breeds sensitivity. Numbing creates debts that collect with interest. Pain makes sure the bill gets paid.

I don’t treat it as instruction. I move through it, around it, sometimes straight into it, if the thing on the other side feels worth the risk. Pain is a gauge, not a guardian. It’s one of the few sensations that resists being faked or prettied up. Joy is fleeting, pride hollow, even awe evaporates eventually. But pain: its roots, its consequences, its echoes in the self and in others; feeds clarity. Whole philosophies start there. Most wisdom does.

I don’t know what this particular pain is teaching me yet. Maybe just that the body still has the power to shut everything else down when it wants your attention. Maybe that’s lesson enough.

how to pick plantings

Some to slow the whims of water.
Some to soften the noise of a world rushing by.
Some to hold the slope that was ready to run.

Others to handle the stampede:
toddlers, politely oblivious dogs,
to be sturdy for the chaos
of another creature’s joy.

Some to offer small fruit.
Some to shade the soil
so it keeps its cool.
And some simply lift their thin feathers
into the last heat of summer,
while others gather the winter wind
to spare whatever grows behind.

I listened, watching the way each plant
leaned a little toward the next
and I thought how often
we lean the same way,
without choosing
and without knowing:
the quiet shelter
we give each other
without being asked.

A little thanks giving

With mom in Taiwan with grandma, sister in Chicago with her cat, I asked dad to come to New York for Thanksgiving where something’s actually happening. It was warm when he arrived, way too warm for a November night. We stepped into the street just after the rain, puddles catching whatever light they could.

Bananas in a paper bag. A tiki bar lit in soft neon. Chips for the walk back. On the way home the wind rose sharply and blew straight into our faces, the kind of cold that warns you about what’s coming. By tomorrow the city will freeze over again.

Radiant under the streetlamp, the Japanese maple outside stands in its velvet blaze.