‘euphoria/u fuck me up’ – by Panda Wong

lying
in my bed thinking
about the manicure I wore at
the bts love yrself tour concert
my impulse-quarter-age-crisis-decision of 2019
the manicure: almond-shaped, green ombre
cute and tiny anime sparkles
my hands in the air
anime-sparkling nails
the closest things to
the sky
jungkook,
singing euphoria
dressed in white
like a hot angel
there’s sth so beautiful
about someone
who will never date u
until recently corrected,
i thought jungkook
was singing
u fuck me up
instead of euphoria
which are imo
interchangeable concepts
i usually hate physical
contact but in this crowd,
at this concert,
my body was a
porous thing
with the capacity
to be full
psychologist peter freund
writes about feelings as spatial,
how feelings describe the
body’s orientation
in space and in
that moment
my body was
ready to have an experience
my body felt
ready to have every experience

thinking about
how euphoria
comes from
the concept
euphoros
the ability to bear or
carry something well
as in how a turducken holding
several types of bird meat might
be some sort of euphoria
depending on your specific
culinary palette,
or how a widowed rottweiler
might care for orphan ducklings
like its own & this
unconventional fulfilment of
its parental instincts
might be
some sort
of euphoria

thinking about how fullness
takes a natural route into intensity
i’ve been leaning into
teenage modes of emotion lately,
msged a friend abt how
i always get lipstick on my chin
from pouting sm
bn learning to lean back
into obsession
until i’m fully submerged in it
like an alarmingly large aspic
that consumes me entirely
bn buying cute outfits
so i can offer my
body to pure
emotion
obsession reminds me
that my body
isn’t just something on loan
it’s actually
like owning numerous pet monkeys
that i dress up in pink
ruffled dresses
& being grateful
that they
don’t rip
my face off
bn getting
Big Crush Energy
on the world
revisiting meta moment in tv series
euphoria, where two characters
who have had a difficult romantic
narrative reignite their
Big Crush Energy
to the sound of euphoria
in the background, a peak moment
of obsession & crushing
& euphoria

tonight I’m
reading a piece
abt appetites & love & care
art critic Roberta Smith says:
pleasure is an important form of knowledge
& i think abt this when
i’m rewatching
old bts concert footage
on my phone
almost a year on
my cherished pixels
all i want is
to maintain
my thirst fr life
feel ok to
ask fr more
i’m not delusional abt
k-pop & the way ppl fetishise
it or its relationship to capitalism or
its impossible beauty standards
as a man kindly reminded me
once at a house party
but i’m allowed to
have complicated
obsessions
i love its ability to
eviscerate
life’s boring
lil residue
how it can
nibble life
down to its
sensitive
& feeling
core

i’m watching
my friends play music
at a pizza place
in fitzroy that
i don’t usually cop
a surprises me
by dropping euphoria
i literally scream!!!
& drop my
pizza slice onto
my plate, my
other friend k
laughing at me
oki sogumi writes
the comfort
of hearing your favourite pop songs
wherever in the world you go
the thing about
ur favourite
songs is that
they find a way to
come back
like a chihuahua
crawling on
its perfect belly
towards u
to roll over
& you look at perfect
belly & see
a cute little mole
you didn’t know
was there
i carry obsession
& Big Crush Energy & nostalgia
& tiny anime sparkles & thirst
& fuzzy chihuahua-bellied-comfort
& that is
a kind of
euphoria