Roundtrip

Roundtrip examines what our relationship is to the idea of home, and what distance and space unlocks for healing when we leave one home in order to build another. The speaker wrestles with her identity and family history as she journeys from the blacktop playgrounds in New Jersey to her grandfather's casket in the Philippines, from board game cafes in Seoul to the wildfire-ridden Lake Tahoe. She reconciles with her scars through cycles of departure and arrival, learning to live with a heart that can love, hurt, and beat in multiple places at once. Roundtrip was named a second honorable mention in Finishing Line Press's 2023 New Women's Voices competition. The poems "Bilateral Stimulation," "Dear Violet," and "Muse" were published as winning pieces for the 2023 Epiphany Fresh Voices Fellowship.