As I hid myself away in the shadows of the towering oak tree, my face stained with salt, I wondered if I could ever run about as carelessly as the kids weaving in and out of the yellow and blue playground equipment did. My mother, who I had met only a few days ago, had abandoned me in this too-bright place with these too-loud people who spoke in an unnaturally garbled tongue. I was confused and distraught, longing to curl up in a tight ball, launch myself into the familiar embrace of my grandmother’s arms, and leave this alien land in the dust.

I was as lost in melancholia as a four year could be when a girl came up to me. She introduced herself, grabbed my hand, and took me on a tour of the plastic landscape. She led in a trance-like state around the playground while I marveled at the ease with which she navigated the field of screaming children. I was beginning to feel a little when, suddenly, a little boy in a bright red hat began throwing handfuls of mulch at me. Unsure of how to react, I just stood there, hand in hand with my new friend, blinking dirt out of my eyes. He only stopped his assault when an intimidatingly large girl approached us. At first, the girl seemed excited but, when her gaze fell to our intertwined fingers, her expression soured.

“Ew!” She exclaimed, yanking our hands apart, “Why are you holding her hand? It’s all weird and gross colored!”

My heart sank. While they argued amongst themselves, I shuffled away, metaphorical tail between my legs.

From that point on, I vowed to keep to myself. I much preferred being invisible, observing safely from a distance, to being the only person in the room who did not bleed red, white, and blue. My only friend for a while was a stuffed gorilla that eventually grew limp from the strength of my grip. Together, we watched and we learned, observing the behavior of these American children in hopes of better understanding them. Soon, I began to pick up on little mannerisms, learning a phrase here or there. After a few weeks, I was able to speak in full sentences. My lips, however, remained shut.

It wasn’t long after that I began to decipher the carefully printed letters under the pictures in the storybooks that the teacher read to us. By kindergarten, I was reading voraciously, mostly simple picture books with the occasional dive into the longer texts in my Mcgraw-Hill reader. When we finally gained access to the library, I moved on to short chapter books, bringing several with me to China. There are still long overdue library books hidden in various nooks and crannies of my grandparents’ old apartment in FuZhou.

My love for reading intensified as I became more and more aware of how lonely I was. For several years, my only friends were the school librarian and the worlds she lent me. It got to where I was reading with a flashlight under the covers every night and hiding books in my desk so that I could read them when class inevitably became too boring.

My teachers had a hard time figuring out what to do with me. I may have not have been paying attention, but I almost always knew the answer to whatever question they asked about the subject at hand. They were also wanting to punishing a child for reading too much; was that something that made sense as educators? They finally settled on taking my books away from me for hours at a time, a loss that I mourned for a total of twenty minutes before I realized that I could write my own stories.

Stashing cheap novelty pencils and flimsy notebooks in the secret pocket of my well-worn Aeropostale zip up hoodie, I wrote down anything and everything that I found even remotely profound in hopes of one day writing as well as any some of my favorite authors. I spent hours producing lengthy journal entries about everything under the sun, from detailed accounts of playground drama to unnecessarily deep analyses of my favorite colors. I wrote until my hands hurt and read until my eyes stung. I felt like an Asian Harriet the Spy (minus the stalking and scandal).

Through literature, I found an escape from the world of self-induced seclusion and unexpected cruelty, discovering the power of creating my own realities using only pencil, paper, and a half-baked imagination.

My creativity stemmed from escapism, a need inside of me to separate myself from myself so that I could look, really look, at the world around me. Writing became a way for me to express myself in ways I didn't necessarily feel confident enough to act upon.

Today, I have no problem screaming my thoughts at an absurdly high volume at people who are, more often than not, already sick of my antics. However, there's always going to be a part of me that shrinks from uncomfortable situations because the fear of making them even more uncomfortable overwhelms me. It's times like these that I find myself really opening up in my writing.

That's why I started this digital publication, to give young creatives a space to share their work, to be vulnerable with the world on their own terms. In a sense, I created The Yellow Cardinal for myself, my younger self, to give her a chance to be heard without having to open her mouth. I hope this publication will do the same for those of you who may relate to her struggles.