Dear Nas,

I’ve been trying to shop less, but more meaningfully. That means buying things that reflect who I am – I feel too much like a Uniqlo mannequin lately. This week I bought a Wu-Tang tote bag on clearance at Primark, or Walmart or Target or whatever. It was Wu-Tang, but it could have been you, Nas.

Whose world is this? It's mine, it's mine, it's mine

Whose world is this? The world is yours, the world is yours

i’d listen. over and over on shitty no-brand Chinese knockoff headphones. i’d learn you. breathe you. hum you. not through a radio with friends or a boombox back in the day, but a crusty headphone jack on a cheap Toshiba – with a shell, plastic and red, like the YouTube logo that I found you under that fateful afternoon, or evening or morning or whatever. Over and over and over. I burned Illmatic onto my iPod Nano, into my psyche. sweat would mix with plastic would mix with an identity that I longed for — so clear, so clear.  Boom bap bars so clear it felt universal, that even an Asian suburbanite could have (hold – latch – leech) 

An invisible thread that strung Me from highschool basketball to college move-in to Oxford England  

An invisible thread 

Which held my yellow skin

Near to bursting 

With its own experiences

But a thread that kept me, laced me tight so I wouldn’t fall apart

Now like stitches, I only see your lines

Written at the places 

Where I join myself 

the pause between cigarette drags 

while folding laundry 

solo grocery shopping 

or writing a letter

to someone who will never read this

And I wonder

Whose world is this?