Darkness

There’s no place I’d rather be

Than in the dark

In silence

Alone

With me myself and I

Where the only place I can look

Is within

The only place I can find

Is within

The only person I can summon

Is me within

The only voice I can hear

Is me within

Embraced by nothing

Observed by nothing

And yet

It makes me feel whole

It makes me feel held

It makes me feel seen

I don’t have to yell

Because the only person I am connecting with is myself

I just have to think

And feel 

And every particle in this darkness

Understands

Outside in

There’s no other way I can get lost in

Because I am already here

I am everywhere

I am one with this darkness

The absence of light

Not evil

Not good

Simply

Nothing

I have extended my physical being to this endless nothingness

Inside out

As if every atom of me has been detonated from my chest

While time stands still

So I can take a good look at everything

Everything floating in this darkness that makes up who I am

There is light somewhere beyond the realm I am in

But that does not incite me

At least not at this time in space

Because in the light there is distraction

And in here distractions are silenced 

And my only request

Is to be entitled

To this darkness

The Face of Life

Sunlight gleamed on us through the mango trees and made scattered puzzle pieces. Our faces are puzzle pieces shuffled and rearranged as we strolled under the shades. Virginia Woolf says, to look life in the face, always. I search for my soul, write about the many ways I’d been broken and healed, lost and found, destroyed and reconstructed. Line after line, through poems, short stories, fiction and non-fiction. Do we create until we find ourselves or do we find ourselves before we can truly create?

All my writings on this blog painted a different, or should I say, evolving picture of what I thought life was. And this picture is still ever-changing, as if I already have all the puzzle pieces, but I rearrange them once in a while, to make sense of it all; to determine how we can shuffle them again to make something better. We don’t know what life is until we know what life is not.

Woolf says, “To always look life in the face, to know it for what it is.” Each time I look back at certain life events, they tell a different story. Perhaps there’s no right ways to live life. The events that I thought victimized me then, have become something that empowers me, now that I look at it with new eyes. These few days I’ve gone back to read my older articles. Things I wrote to help myself rationalize or understand life and how to live it. To always pick the harder road but not the one that’s the easiest – today, I fully understand the meaning of this. It’s not just about survival. It is the epitome of happiness. The fulfillment lies in the pursuit of happiness, in the harder road.

As we walked deeper into the garden, and away from the shaded path, we found a bench to sit down right opposite a small slope. Our faces are no longer framed by fragmented shapes. They are now whole and intact. We had been on different, yet parallel paths in our lives, walking in the same pace. As you embark on your soul-searching journey, I have stumbled upon the answer to life and its enigma. We see life in ways that it is, as much as in ways that it’s not. Life is not meant to be seen moment by moment, but to be admired as a whole. We must acknowledge the role we play in our own suffering, and we must forgive ourselves for how we survived. We must look life in the face. Cherish the ones who stay, including ourselves. Decorate the space inside our head. Fight for what’s important to us. Stand for something. Breathe. Listen. Slow down. Pause. Feel. Love. Love ourselves unconditionally. Look life in the face, not in fragments, but as a whole.

Past Lives

– Spoilers Alert –

Past Lives, a film directed by Celine Song, has been praised by critics since its release. And finally, I had the time to see what it’s all about.

As the final scene faded into silence, right after Nora buries her teary face into her husband Arthur’s arms, I remained still, trying to contemplate the meaning of this delicate story. It left a bittersweet aftertaste with me in the following week.

The numerous reviews on critic’s forums certainly didn’t do this film justice, not because the comments were negative, but because most of them accepted it as a love story. This prompted me to express my interpretation which resonates with me, someone who shares a multicultural background with the protagonist, Nora. The film touched on several cultural and social subjects, and the director unites all of them brilliantly with an overarching theme – identity and belonging.

This story is certainly not about love, but about life, as the title suggests. It is a story about life, told through the lens of romance.

Primary vs Secondary Identity

The story follows Nora, the protagonist, from her childhood in Korea, to the adult Nora who had immigrated to Canada with her family, then immigrated to New York alone. Through the timeline, Nora has transformed from a “Korean-Korean” into a “Korean-American”, where neither we, nor Nora herself, can construe if this outcome was self-imposed or organic.

The film began with the scene where the protagonist and her sister were choosing their English names, and their parents preparing for the documents for immigration. Na Young is now Nora.

Several scenes conveyed the same message where Nora slowly adopts a secondary personality and identity, like when she struggled to type Korean on an English keyboard, and when she mentioned to Hae Sung that she only spoke Korean to him and her mother, which explained why her Korean wasn’t as good as her English.

12 years have passed, and Nora reconnected with Hae Sung, and it is apparent that she is trying hard to hang onto her Korean identity and culture, by staying in touch with Hae Sung, despite the time difference and physical distance between them.

Some might argue that this is a romantic setting about two childhood friends reconnecting and trying to reignite the love they had, but this is not the case, as they never mentioned love in their exchanges. The most intimate line they said to each other during this virtually connected phase was “I miss you”. We can interpret that Nora felt nostalgia rather than love, for Hae Sung.

“He was just this kid in my head for such a long time. And then he was just this image on my laptop. And now he's a physical person. It's really intense, but I don't think that that's attraction, I think I just missed him a lot. I think I miss Seoul.” 

– Nora

24 years have passed. Now we are in Nora and her husband Arthur’s bathroom where she said the following things after she met Hae Sung in person in New York.

“It's so crazy to see him be this grown-up man with a normal job and a normal life. He's so Korean. He still lives with his parents, which is really Korean. And he has all these really Korean views about everything. And I feel so not Korean when I'm with him. But also, in some way, more Korean? It's so weird. I mean, I have Korean friends, but he's not, like, Korean-American. He's Korean-Korean.” 

– Nora

Now, Nora has already been immersed in her secondary culture for over 2 decades. She has completely left her Korean identity behind, to a point where she struggles to accept the Korean way of living; to a point where meeting another Korean-Korean makes her feel both out of place, and a little more in-touch with her Korean identity.

The Belief of the “Superior” Western Culture

Another key subject that’s explored in this film is the belief (among Asian cultures) that the Western Culture is superior. As Nora’s family was preparing for immigration, Nora explained to her classmates that her father believed that he would thrive as a playwright in Canada, and Nora would have a higher chance to win the Nobel Prize if she left Korea.

And as we watch till the end, Nora (and her father) hasn’t necessarily achieved anything she believed the Western culture could enable her to achieve.

“Is this what you imagined for yourself when you left Seoul? Is this what you pictured for yourself? Laying in bed in some tiny apartment in the East Village with some Jewish guy who writes books? Is that what your parents wanted for you?” 

– Arthur

Nora’s response to that revealed her disillusionment of this belief. And Arthur’s statement confirmed it for the audience – that the Western Culture is indeed, quite the opposite of its excessive glorification and association with opportunities to succeed.

“You’re asking me if you, Arthur Zaturansky, are the answer to my family’s immigrant dream?”… “This is where I ended up. This is where I’m supposed to be.” 

– Nora

“It’s just that you make my life so much bigger, and I’m wondering if I do the same thing for you.” 

– Arthur

The Guilt of Abandoning an Old Identity

Up to this part of the story, where most critics interpret as Nora’s unwillingness to let go of a childhood love, I’d like to see it as her sense of guilt and betrayal if she had to leave her old identity, and old life behind, to fully embrace her new identity of a Westernized Nora.

“It's like planting two trees in one pot. Our roots need to find their place.” 

– Nora

Most people would question, why can’t someone embrace both their identities? I guess the answer is yes, but if you are bilingual or multilingual, you’d understand a little more that you tend to take on a different version of yourself when you are speaking a different language (read more about this in my article here). There’s always a dominant identity or personality that pushes the other out.

And Nora struggles to maintain a balance, to find the space in a pot for both roots.

Free Will vs Destiny

When Nora and Arthur met in the artist residency, Nora spoke of a Korean (and Asian) belief (called In Yun: 姻緣), where fate contributes to what happens in our lives.

In another scene where Arthur and Nora were in bed, and Arthur imagined a life which Nora made different choices and suggested a different ending. To which, Nora said, “This is where I ended up... this is where I'm supposed to be.”

Arthur’s perspective on where we end up in life is mainly decided by us and the choices we make, while Nora leans towards the credence that it is destiny or fate, or what Koreans call “In Yun”.

In the scene where Hae Sung and Nora went sight-seeing, Hae Sung brought up the following question. 

“What prize do you want to win nowadays? When you were little you wanted to win the Nobel Prize, and twelve years ago you wanted to win the Pulitzer. What do you want to win now?” 

– Hae Sung

I couldn’t help but contemplate the irony in which, Nora did believe that her decision to choose to leave Korea was to achieve something she could not in Korea, which suggested that she did believe she has a choice in what she wants in life.

Identity and Belonging

The overarching theme in this film was manifested by both Nora and Arthur, from different perspectives.

One scene that stuck with me, was when Arthur felt inadequate that he couldn’t understand Nora when she talked in her sleep in Korean, which led him to learn Korean just to understand his wife more.

This scene perfectly epitomized the theme of identity and belonging – To see someone completely, we need to understand them. And to fully understand them, we need to connect to all their identities.

On the flip side, rather than taking up a new language to understand her husband, Nora learnt English as an immigrant to be accepted by the Western culture, in hopes that she finds a sense of belonging to this new foreign place. And unintentionally, gradually, she left her other identity and culture behind.

The contrasting rationale of Arthur taking up a new language versus Nora’s, illuminated the gap in their relationship, and in a way, certain privileges of Westerners in the context of immigration. And I think that Nora’s refusal to address this gap (reflected in her reluctant attitude of “it is what it is”) is partly because she believes that Arthur will never understand her fully, even by learning her language.

And here, I can establish the understanding that Arthur is a representation of Nora’s secondary culture, while Hae Sung her native. And they are strongly tied to how Nora sees herself and how she exists in these two very different worlds.

Perhaps this can explain why Nora found it challenging to cut ties with Hae Sung, a childhood friend she no longer can relate to, both in life and in experience: because she cannot feel an absolute sense of belonging to the Western culture.

At the bar, the director placed Nora in between Arthur and Hae Sung, directly depicting Nora’s dilemma, prompting her to make up her mind in this in-between and limbo state of finding a sense of belonging as an immigrant.

And finally, Nora has decided to choose to belong to her American identity, to surrender the notion that life is purely In Yun, and to accept that she is the person who contributes to how she wants her life to end up:

“The Na Young you remember... doesn't exist here. That little girl did exist. She's not sitting here in front of you... but it doesn't mean she's not real. Twenty years ago, I left her behind with you.” 

– Nora

In the end, she mustered the courage to let go of a life that she has long lost touch with, and ultimately, she finds peace.

This film is an absolute masterpiece – subtle yet powerful, tragic yet beautiful. The director explicitly forced me to contemplate life – what have we sacrificed to become? And are we making what we've sacrificed, worth it?

“If you bought a ticket to see this show, took the subway or a cab to be here, it cost you something to be here, and spend a couple hours with these old women. That makes you some kind of immigrant. And... all this cost me something too. I crossed the Pacific Ocean to be here. Some crossings cost more than others. Some crossings... you pay for with your whole life.”

 

重臨仙蹤 (下)

仙蹤 (上) →

微風般的呼吸撫摸著對方的面頰

對彼此的沈默瞭如指掌

你我之間最近的距離

是甘澀的共同回憶與體諒

原來無須文字言語

無須絞盡腦汁

傳心術是我們的超能力

謙遜地炫耀著敢愛的勇氣

人類的心臟是上帝皮開肉綻的傷口

而我們是它的體驗者

從來一切的煎熬享受

原來未曾獨自經歷

我說我想念你

你說你更想念我

我們都喜歡做贏家

然而此刻我願賭服輸

在無止境的雙人床上

我們總會找到彼此

直到破曉時分被夏日喚醒

繪聲繪色地講述夢裡的仙蹤

忘了從哪天開始言不由衷

嘴角掛著不在乎

卻要誓死捍衛

你早已被現實粉碎的心

一場德克薩斯撲克的全押

在下賭注前已把你看得透徹

有所失必有所得是我們的座右銘

費一番五年的苦功才學會

命運不會領會故事的寓意

只懂得徘徊

直到獅子覺悟

牠就是故事的掌門人

紅塵要靠經歷去看破

原來有一種緣份

是在彼此相遇前

相遇自己

仙蹤 (上) →

The Haven for Time

It’s snowing in London tonight. I wonder if you’re fascinated by it as I would be. I travel the world inside my head, going a mile an hour, trying to picture myself next to you as we watch the fragments of heaven sprinkling down, illuminating our awfully ordinary world. I secretly hope it wouldn’t stop, so you could finally have a moment to admire what others take for granted. Yet, I did not want to call you or let you know that I was having that moment to myself. It’s shameful. I guess we’re all crazy in our own ways.

I am not condemning myself for dwelling on bygones. Sometimes reliving all the details is when you finally begin to forget. But really, there’s nothing to forget about. We were just two people caught in the eye of a storm. We did what we could do best, which was to relinquish something even time did not have the capacity to hold. What seemed to be chaos at the time, in hindsight, was a mere disguise of the power that transformed us into something bigger than what our minds could ever fathom. I’d like to believe that nothing was destined. And you were the enabling factor of the fact that I no longer am the person I was, simply by being yourself.

We’re now miles apart, but even if I can’t love you as a lover, I will not stop loving you as a friend. You were the person who saw the wounds I hid from the rest of the world. You saw them as if they glowed in the dark. And on top of everything you taught me how to adore them. Time did not allow us to construct our very own hiding place, but it’s incontrovertible that we’ve both kept the blueprint of it. The time we spent together was temporary, but in my mind those moments last forever. All this time I thought that if I've had mummified what we had, we could come back to pick it up where we left off. But that night when you told me you felt the same connection, I finally realized that not everything fleets, and what we had can always be revisited.

Life will continue to love a changed person. And I’ve learnt that sometimes letting go is a way of holding on.

Private Passion & Public Intimacy

It’s always raining in my dreams

in which you live

The sky is perpetually slate blue

Drizzles become a downpour without exception

And you disappear every time

right before I lie half-awake on my bed

attempting to fall back into that state

where it feels like my insides

are being cut open by the jagged pieces

of my broken heart

The state when I finally remember

what it feels like to be vulnerable

To be hurt

A burnt child loves fire, Oscar Wilde said

Perhaps we’re obsessed with conquering what we can’t

But to me there’s also something addictive

about a certain type of aching

It’s about my infatuation

with the elegance of a dancing flame

and how it seduces my senses feverishly

How its vigor renders me defenseless

This is my kind of intimacy with the fathomless world

To appreciate and consume the beauty of it

is to be exposed and powerless

To be honest and unapologetic

even if it means hurting the other person

to reignite what has been long-lost

Because what we’ve never been told is that

Numbness leaves a more obtrusive burn mark

I self-hypnotized my mind back into the dream

in which I was soaked under the pouring rain

not able to search for you

among all the other blurred faces passing by

Repenting for telling you to leave me forever

My cheeks lukewarm from countless tears

Yet every inch of me was falling in love with each second I spent

in this sick little echo chamber I'd built myself

Writer's Block

At dawn I like to sit by the ocean
where my turbulent thoughts go for a swim
to be reminded that they also have the power
to drench a certain type of melancholy
and shatter a dam that holds up any inspirations
There is healing quality in the way it shimmers
as if it can tell whether I am in touch
with whatever that is within me
I can measure loss against its mass
and suddenly everything in life will seem so complete
Ever again I rest on the sand
with my notebook of writings next to me
until moonlit seashells linger elsewhere
From afar white foams explode into madness
but the hem that touches my knees look so smooth
A storm with a soft edge
that can wreck a ship
but caress the limpets
though they do not seem to care
about how many lives the tides took
Like I, they refuse to disturb
this perfect serenity in a chaotic mess
Sea-kissed cheeks and sand in my feet
Sun-dried hair and memories everywhere
It is time for my thoughts to return to shore
and scribble a few lines in my journal
Bringing them for a dip makes me cherish poetry all the more
All poems speak but a good one listens
Life never ceases to have meaning
Even in suffering
Even in death
I shut my eyes and let the waves
whisper a story about
something coming
something going

The World As We Know It

Last night I dreamt that the world ended
I was running in a forest where trees were made of darkness
The floor made of ice beneath my bare feet
It felt like a million needles piercing through them
In the dream we lost sight of each other forever
When I screamed your name
the echoes only came back endlessly
And no matter how much tears I cried
it still felt like all hell had broken loose inside my bones
I was awaken when the drizzle stopped
The sky is now tinted with a washed-up yellow
Clouds looking like they're in polaroid photos
The blanket was not covering my feet
My mind wanders back into the nightmare I was about to forget
Heartbreaks are so memorable
Even in dreams
In the waking world they come in waves, invariably
And the surroundings seem less dramatic
In the waking world I'll torch the trees
I'll muffle my ears from my own voice
I'll drill apart the glacier
In the waking world
I won't go looking for you running –
the cold will paralyze my frosted feet
But in the real world
I spoke to you with words I used to tear myself apart with
Words that are now foreign to me
In the real world I was just violently
trying to see the most vulnerable side you'd never show anyone
In the real world I missed all the parts your hands held and let go of
Everywhere overflowing with love
But it's always Winter with your touch
Your words more frigid than hailstones
And I thought I was angry with you
when I was only angry with myself
because what you said made me believe
that I didn't understand the world anymore
"Well, that's your problem," you'd say
And that's true
The world has been the same
What has changed was the way I looked at it
I tried my best to understand the real world
To rationalize what you said to me
But your words
They're still foreign to me
And we're still a planet away from each other
So lately I've been thinking
Maybe I'll never understand at all
Because to understand is not to think
To understand is to experience
And how we see the world is how we see ourselves in it
In the real world, I was running away from you
In the real world, I was afraid
In the real world
My world ended when we lost sight of each other, forever

Purple Paper Crane

She demonstrated with the same paper over and over again
until its creases resembled the patterns on the back of her hand
My clumsy fingers poking in between layers
trying to make pockets with those squares
I heard it's where they keep our wishes
and devour the paper fishes
She said, "You don't have to recite the steps if you learn it by heart,
then you'll remember how to do it like a work of art.
Origami is a lesson in life about patience,
and this must be passed down through generations."
Purple paper crane – how can something so frail hold so many stories?
Purple paper crane – a beautiful cradle for all our memories
The best things we give should be the things that will never be lost
and the most valuable things we keep, should be those that don't have a cost
The day when you finally understand why
is the day the paper cranes in your heart begin to fly.

Ultramarine

Again and again
Your silhouette spinning in slow motion
before the dimming lights
coming through the kitchen
Baby I can see your wounds
The walls are the decaying kind of navy
Is snow falling from the ceiling?
Why are we shivering?
Again and again
Blue veins snaking through our arms
We are ceramic art
Vulnerability on display
Even a needle can break us
These cravings are intrusive
Again and again
We are talking in slam poetry
Listen babe,
I'm leaving New York City
Don't come after me
Why are you covering your ears?
Violent delights have violent ends
I'm just not ready to love you
Again and again
Your fingertips on my lips
Your eyes a falling tide
The sky is ultramarine tonight
"Why aren't we fighting for that something anymore?"
Because this is more addictive than heroin
And I don't want to do this again and again
So why don't you go and love someone who loves you back?

Our Bedroom After the War

Written on 4th April, 2013.

A Girl's Handbook of Survival

Your face doesn't appear on my eyelids anymore when I close them.
I am slowly forgetting how you look.
A girl taught me to lock my front door against the past – not to hide from it;
just until it gets tired of waiting, and leaves eventually.
Now I belong to a place where the backyard flowers bloom,
where I can't remember how smoking my morning cigarette barefoot at your doorstep felt like.
She also said to me,
"Girl you think too much. You feel too much."
I thanked her as I took a long sip of wine straight from the bottle.
Perhaps growing numb is easier than growing a new heart.
Aren't we all working on our independent woman?
I guess I am somewhere between choking on idealism and
snorting lines of a 9-5 routine of adult responsibilities.
I keep an Atlas of myself so I know where all the wounds are that my hands shouldn't touch.
We all have our own tricks, and my writings are an album of advice on coping with despair from every girl I meet.
All the quick fixes and yet I still can't recall the person I was before I met him.
My best friend said, "Maybe you should sleep with a lot of other people."
That kind of felt like watching fireworks but without the splendor.
Another girl told me maybe I should stop writing for a while.
I ended up telling the wrong things to all the wrong people.
My mother said, "Go marry a rich guy and cry in a Lamborghini – men will always be the same, but by then you'll have money."
Never done this but perhaps I should give it a try.
Isn't this what we talk about after we talked about love?
The pills for its repercussion.
Our defense mechanism against disillusionment.
Joy can be shared but suffering demands to be endured alone.
When we have that talk we are just strangers confessing to strangers.
All these shortcuts that you might not completely agree with.
But I guess if they don't work we are still making new memories.
Ah, there's the silver lining.
At the end of the day aren't we all just trying to survive?

A Creative Response to The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Foreword

A reimagined ending to The Hours, written by Michael Cunningham*, imitating the style of the novel (also one of the assignments back in uni that I never got to publish on my personal blog). Three story-lines start at the turning point of the three protagonists' stories in the original book: Laura Brown – after her stay at the hotel; Virginia Woolf – after her attempt to runaway from home; Clarissa "Mrs. Dalloway" – after Richard's funeral.

*The Hours is a reimagined story based on Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Laura Brown

Seven days have passed, recalling each detail of the hotel room is starting to seem like a laborious task for Laura’s brain. The aroma of flowery soap gradually turns into the familiar scent of cigarette and coffee that always linger on Dan’s shirt. Cool and clean bed sheets that sent shivers down her spine whenever she touched them are replaced by the fuzzy unmade bed she’s sitting on. Next to her are the couple’s blanket and the small quilt her mother sewed her when she moved in with Dan which she covers herself with sometimes. Sometimes – that is when the warmth radiating from her husband’s chest is too much to bear. It is mid-afternoon and Laura has pulled up the blinds to let the sun in. She goes to the kitchen to pick up the book she has misplaced. Everything in the house is so familiar. Too familiar. She notices the seams that are coming apart in the cushion on the stool and thinks of running an errand to get a new set for all four stools in the kitchen. The plates in the sink that Richie and Dan had the first eggs Benedict with (made by Laura in the morning) are still tainted with yolk. One edge of the stove appears to be rusting. All these novelties are too familiar to Laura. There are duties for her to do even not of her own will and there are obligations for Dan to fulfill to keep the family comfortable. Laura understands how things work. She understands too well. Just like how Dan signed up for the army, Laura signed up for a life that the women working in the grocery store downtown have waited their entire lives for.

She makes herself a cup of coffee and dumps in two sugar cubes. She has tucked Richie into bed for a nap. Laura stirs the coffee with one hand and holds up the book in another. She sits on the cushion that will soon be replaced and turns to the page with the bookmark Dan gave her.

But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibers with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement.

Laura takes a sip of the coffee but the hot liquid burns her lip. She puts it down in a reflex. She goes to the cupboard to get a mug and pours herself some cold water to relieve the pain. She passes the fridge and catches a glimpse of the photograph she took of Dan and the cake she made for him – his grin identical to Richie’s when she picked him up from the babysitter after coming back from the hotel. Her gaze falls upon the blue icing on the cake. It seemed perfect then. It looks slightly crooked in the photo now. She thinks of Virginia Woolf’s many attempts at the paragraph so beautiful that made her forget to blow on the coffee before drinking. Has Virginia ever attempted to bake? Laura shakes her head at her own thought. How silly! Baking a cake is too trivial for an intelligent woman like Virginia. Baking a cake is too trivial for any woman who has not a single clue of her limitless abilities. She drinks the cold water and goes back to reading.

The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred with black branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried.

A child is crying. Richie is awoken from a dream. Laura goes into his room and holds him in her arms. “It’s alright baby, mommy’s here,” Laura wipes away the sweat on Richie’s forehead. “Go to sleep, mommy’s not going anywhere.” Laura takes the book to the room and sits next to Richie’s bed. She puts her hand on his hip and brushes on his baby clothes. “Mommy,” Richie raises his arm and tries to touch Laura. She holds his hand and brings it to brush his hair with her finger until Richie can no longer withstand the weight of his eyelids.

Laura pulls the blanket over Richie. As she is standing up, her elbow hits a sketch book and it falls onto the rug. She picks it up and opens it. The sketch book is almost empty; only the first two pages are filled with messy and sticky red lines of the crayon Kitty gave Richie for his birthday. Next to the box of crayons is a photo of Laura’s first birthday with Richie. He was sitting on her lap while Dan was bending forward to the birthday cake with his hand on the back of the chair she was sitting on. They had the celebration in Dan’s parents’ house. The golden frame refracts the sun that slips through the drawn blinds onto Richie’s face. Beams land on the contours of his eyes, nose and cheeks. His lashes are tinted with the gold that resembles the color of the candle lights in the photograph. Laura turns the frame to a different angle so that the light does not disturb Richie’s sleep. She places the sketchbook on the bedside table and turns to a blank page and starts writing with a blue crayon.

Richie rubs his eyes and stretches. It has been three hours since Laura sits down beside her son. She has only been able to come up with six lines, barely a stanza. Rhyming is easy, she learnt that in school. Maintaining the meter is quite challenging to Laura. There is so much to express but so little room in a poem to make possible.

Her life in silver chain
Counted in candle flames
Past the bars is a child’s
only glimpse of the wild
A lion without the mane
None but an oblivious reign

Though she has stayed in the same spot for hours, Laura feels as if something inside her has wandered up and down the whole neighbourhood, even so far that it reaches the hotel room she rented last week. She looks at the photograph and at Dan’s grin. It is the same grin as that one on the fridge. She tears off the page and folds it in two halves. “I want to wee wee,” Richie murmurs. Laura carries him down from the bed, and he walks clumsily to the bathroom. After she loses sight of her son, she takes apart the frame and slips the paper into the back of the photo, then puts the components back together. Laura opens the drawer and lays the frame down, with the photo and the poem she has written, neatly along the vertical edge. She gently closes it.

Virginia Woolf

The day after Leonard found out about her escape to the train station, Virginia wakes up to a more settling feeling that her husband is planning the move back to London. She enters the kitchen and sees Nelly’s apron covered in flour. “Good morning, Mrs. Woolf,” Nelly turns to Virginia and tries to wipe her hands on the white cloth hanging in front of her body which only results in dusting the powder onto the floor. “Morning. Have you seen Leonard?” Virginia looks at the dough under the rolling pin, avoiding eye-contact. She forces herself to bring her gaze on Nelly, as she convinces herself that there is nothing to be embarrassed about making the decision to run away to the train station. “He has gone to the post office,” Nelly turns back to flattening the dough. Virginia sits down at the table and drinks her tea as she watches Nelly pressing at the bread she’s making with all her force. Virginia has never learnt how to bake. She can cook, but she is not good at it. She sips at her tea quietly as she tries to block the birth of the idea that Nelly holds contempt towards her for not being able to bake or to send the mails herself. She imagines Vanessa paying her a visit and joins Nelly with the baking. Her sister is so different from her. Virginia understands the importance of making food, gathering leaves and picking rotten tomatoes. She understands that there are things to do that seem to have little impact at the hours that she does them, but will eventually build up to influence the next hours tremendously. Virginia thinks that everything domestic is associated with pragmatism. And she is not pragmatic, she hears voices and sometimes believes them. Leonard though, he is practical. He listens to the scientific, and arranges a new life for her here and soon in London that somehow will seem to work out perfectly. He sorts out editorial matters when Virginia is too busy with selecting the pieces of imaginations that run in her head; that run in that dome of suffering. Virginia contemplates the social expectations of men and women. She thinks of her character. Mrs. Dalloway will not abide by the limits of the world she exists in. She will be both notional and practical. She will be feminine with people and masculine with her everyday responsibilities.

Clarissa “Mrs. Dalloway”

The flowers are still there next to Richard’s tombstone when Clarissa visits him the week after the funeral. Editors and old friends showed up that day – even Walter and Evan who’s in a wheelchair. Laura was there too. She sat alone in the front seat silently throughout the ceremony. She did not weep. She looked smaller than she did at the party that night after Richard leapt out of the window. The mourners; all of them black; came with different kinds of flowers; a bunch of colors. Dead yet vibrant with life. Clarissa gathered them in a bundle; they had left their soil and they had come here to rot with him. The flowers had their hours. The flowers, such an important triviality that we always remember to bring, will eventually sink into oblivion when the mourners leave.

“There’s no more voices, Richard, there is only peace now,” Clarissa whispers as she touches the carvings on the tall concrete. She brushes her finger across the little dash between the two years – the tiny horizontal line that contains Richard’s hours. She removes her hand in a split second because the heat of the sun that has radiated at it is too much for her to bear.

Clarissa goes back to Richard’s apartment to tidy up his belongings. This room is still familiar; too familiar to her. But like Richard, this place will disappear in the coming space time. It will be rented out to someone new; probably a foreigner who is on a business trip. The chair will be gone and the wallpapers will be taken down. An immense ache hits her in the chest when she’s piling up the drafts. She suddenly feels reluctant to carry on with what she has been doing. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been. Clarissa’s mind keeps replaying Richard’s last words. They are so persistent. She wishes she had been able to say something in return, something to make him stay. Has she really been happy? Had they been? Happy is not happy unless juxtaposed with sorrow. But God, she tries. She tried so hard to show Richard, too. And she knows that he knew. He called her Mrs. Dalloway; said she had the heart of a mother and the soul of a fighter. He admired her efforts at life, at living.

One morning when Clarissa visited Richard with a new coat, she found him sitting beside the window shedding a tear. Clarissa laid the coat down on the bed, almost as if she was throwing it. She rushed to him who was sitting so sternly on his favorite chair. “Is everything okay?” Clarissa asked with concern, while closing the window in front of him. “Leave it open, love,” Richard demanded. She followed the direction of his gaze and her eyes fell upon a tree across the street. Its leaves were red and yellow, like maples. But there weren’t maples where they lived. It was only a withering tree telling the neighborhood of the arrival of Fall. “Why haven’t I seen this tree earlier? Such a beauty, isn’t it, Mrs. D?” Richard asked Clarissa in awe. “Yes, indeed,” she noticed the details of it. The gold-plated leaves swayed in the soft wind and the tree was dancing, as if it had a mind of its own. “What a pity if it was left with no one to love it after I die, isn’t it?” Richard’s voice trembled as his eyes were growing watery again. “Oh, don’t be silly,” she put a hand on his shoulder. It was just a tree. Its leaves would fall and new leaves would emerge when Spring came. The gold would be gone and green would take over. It’s a cycle of life. It’s inevitable. It’s just a tree with golden leaves at this hour; it wasn’t Meryl Streep whose hours would go on and on even when her entire face was covered with wrinkles or when she’s dead.

Clarissa lets out a long sigh and brings herself to continue with piling up the drafts. She wonders if Richard would want her to publish these raw sketches or their edited versions. She wonders if Richard would want her to publish them at all. Amongst the messy handwritten paper, there’s a thick one with creases – almost as thick as a drawing canvas. There’s a poem on it but the first few lines are written with a fading blue. It’s almost like paint but thicker. The lower half of the poem is scribbled with thin lines of a pen. These handwriting look different. Perhaps they’re written by two different people.

Her life in silver chain
Counted in candle flames
Past the bars is a child’s
only glimpse of the wild
A lion without the mane
None but an oblivious reign
Her grasp of an open sky
Trapped in the child’s eyes
Fire will yield to the rain
Sorrow runs in our veins
Beyond the cage is pain
Our gold will not remain

Clarissa folds the paper along the old creases and slips it into her pocket. She decides to send it to the publishers after showing it to Laura. The gold will not remain, but Richard’s hours will.

Merci

What happened in memories are different but don't they all start to give you the same feelings after a period of time? After the fermentation of what we lived, the emotions attached wear out and become elusive, while fragments of experiences turn into fine wine that complements the conversations we make with new people at dinner tables.

Thinking back on the time I spent in Paris now feels exactly the same as any other memories I've had in my life. I couldn't remember how I felt back then if I didn't try hard enough. Generally speaking, everything just feels nostalgic yet trivial to me regardless of it being a good memory or bad, and we become comfortable with talking about it as if it's harmless now.

A month before heading to Paris, I, a fanatic, showed him a photo of this bookstore that I really wanted to visit, "Do you know where this is?" "Merci," he said, "that's one of my favorite places and I was planning to bring you there. Where did you find this photo?"

So a month later I was there. Now I already forgot how I felt at that time but I was probably having an adrenaline rush, like when you visit a place you've seen in your favorite movie. But apart from the excitement for the place itself I guess it was also the influence of too much caffeine and nicotine - he made me coffee every morning in my favorite glass that had flamingo prints on it and had our morning cigarettes in the balcony with the April breeze spiking through his hoodie (which I gave him on his birthday) that I was wearing and the strong sunlight blinding my sight that I couldn't see his face.

One time, at MK2 Bibliothèque, after being traumatized from watching Red Sparrow, it was already too late to catch a bus or a taxi. It was so cold that we had to hide from the wind behind doors while waiting for our Uber ride back home. We were both wearing leather jackets that couldn't keep us warm and he held my hand so tightly in his pocket to stop it from shaking. I've forgotten how it feels now but I remember at that moment I realized I loved him so much. We got into an Uber and he was still holding my hand in his pocket while explaining to me that the driver was playing French rap music.

The day before I left Paris, we went to MK2 Bibliothèque again. That was our favorite place to hang out. We were having the best burgers at the open area with wooden tiles on the floor. A piece of wood got stuck in my right palm and it started to swell up really badly. He was so worried and he tried to look for the closest clinic to get that piece of wood out and to clean my wound. But it was very late when it happened and all the shops were closed. We walked for 20 minutes and there were still no clinics or pharmacies. He called his mother at one point and she told him we could take the metro and go to this pharmacy that opened till late at night. We took different transportations and it took us 45 minutes to get there. He was checking my wound every minute during the trip. And when we arrived and finally got rid of the wood in my hand, we walked around that area filled with night life. People were dancing Two-Step in the street with their partners. When we finally got home after midnight, his parents, who usually went to bed early, were still waiting in the living room for us so they could properly say goodbye to me, and I think at that time it warmed my heart.

I guess being human just means that you feel everything and then nothing and everything again. This implies that now I might think of all memories as a hollow shell, and yet on the day when I die, all of them would come back again in waves and we would experience and feel everything again right before we close our eyes.

We all go through that transition period when reality slowly becomes memories. Some people take longer to adapt and some experience it faster than when it actually happens. I remember about two weeks before we decided to go our separate ways, he said he felt that something had died, but he didn't know what it was. In hindsight now I finally understand that he had already gone through the transition period while I still felt like I was living in that reality believing that he was still the same person who went to the airport 3 hours early to pick me up because he was scared that I would get lost. His voice still calmed me and whenever I closed my eyes, his face still appeared crystalized. This lasted about 2 months until I realized it's really over.

Even though I don't feel anything right now while documenting these scenes flashing across my mind, I can never forget that it felt overwhelming at that time when they happened. Were we happy? We must've been. If all love starts with a spark then what we had must've been a forest fire. But feelings have wilted and meanings are lost. The only thing I should be grateful for is that he gave me such beautiful memories. In fact that should be the case for other memories with other people as well. I'm very certain that I will never feel anything like that again, but that shouldn't be an upsetting fact. And whenever we feel that nostalgia is consuming us, it only means that we are moving forward. A few days ago I realized I was already done with that transition phase. There's only gratitude whenever I think about him, and now, finally, I learn to see the good in goodbyes.

Thanks for the memories

What Love Can't Conquer

Lamp posts from the streets outside seeped through the flimsy curtains and made a landing on our bare feet jostled on a footstool. That was our only source of light and it flickered like flames as the soft wind pierced through the half-opened windows. This was a night in December from a dim and distant past in Mid Levels of Hong Kong. The air was filled with the scents of cologne and weed and leftover pizza on the coffee table. All that could be heard was dialogues from a movie we were watching that I can't remember now. We moved back into the room to finish watching the remaining half of it when it became too cold in the living room.

The heater was blowing balmy breeze at the duvet from the end of the bed. It started raining outside and we could make fog with our breaths. I couldn’t tell if the bedsheets were damp from humidity or just too cold. A couple walked past and their tiny silhouettes were projected on the curtains like a shadow puppet show. Their conversation was inaudible but for a few seconds, their laughter was included in our movie until it slowly faded as they walked further away from the window.

Memories of a few similar nights whiz across my mind in snippets. He came over for Christmas, for just 2 weeks. Everything was quiet and still. I remember we talked in low whispers. We didn't want to be louder than the rain or the soundtrack of the movie, or our heartbeats. Those nights were so cold we had to hide our freezing faces under the blankets when we slept. He came up on top of me, and in pitch darkness his hand searched for my eyelids, my nose and my lips. He held my face and brushed his thumb across my cheek. We were so close that I felt his warm breath on my lips. He whispered something to me that I can't remember now. I lifted the blanket so I could see him. Again, lights penetrated the thin curtain cloths and illuminated one side of his face. Tears were gushing out from his blue eyes like there was an ocean inside he couldn't hold. It was his second-last night in Hong Kong. "I don't want you to leave," I said with a shaky voice, slightly louder than a whisper. He said something back that I've already forgotten. But I remember it was lovely.

That night I dreamt that we were standing at two separate and opposite cliffs of a rock pool with water at the far bottom; it was crystal clear. We took off our clothes and stacked them up in tidy piles. He jumped into the shimmering water and made a huge splash. Then I went in headfirst without fear. We held our breaths and went under together. Rays of light travelled through the water in straight and parallel pillars. I was hypnotized by those unbroken lines. Our hair was floating, our noses blowing small bubbles and our limbs dancing freely in the clear blue. Everything was in slow motion when we were submerged underneath - blinking, smiling, waving… It felt like time would wait. He swam towards me, trying to hold my hand. His face was close to mine, and his eyes became one with the water, extending the capacity that could finally contain the entire ocean. He tried to say something to me, but I couldn't hear it through the muffled sounds.

I gestured him to go back up so I could hear him say it. Then I went up to gasp for air, waiting for him to appear from beneath. I wiped my face with my hands, and looked for him everywhere above the water. But he wasn't there. I went back into the water and searched for him again in panic. He wasn't there either. I swam around the area, through boulders and over corals, going deeper and further. He was gone. I went up for air again, and the floor started to grow higher and higher and it became mud everywhere until I realized I was stuck in quicksand. Using all my strength, I broke free from dirt, and secured myself on solid ground. I saw my clothes still piled up neatly there, clean and untouched. On the other side of the quicksand where his pile of clothes were supposed to be, was now empty. I was soaked and naked, panting with tears, sweating with the chills.

A twitch in my sleep woke me up from that nightmare and dawn was already breaking outside the window. He was sleeping soundly beside me. The room was filled with dim orange sunlight. The laptop was still open and the heater was still running low at our feet.


"I gave you my world."

He said that when we were saying our goodbyes. He said a lot of other things too - all of them I'd rather forget.

But now I remember that's what he was trying to say, too, when we were in the water.

Pink Aurora

Pink aurora slightly below the abdomen
Pink aurora with hints of purple
Pink aurora the manifestation of motherhood
Pink aurora a less masculine color of its kind
Pink aurora I’m just fascinated by rare clouds
Pink aurora more like a fantasy since my earliest memory
Pink aurora too elusive to make her presence felt
Pink aurora always followed by a storm
Pink aurora so ugly and stubborn
Pink aurora with no purpose
Pink aurora appeared after The pouring rain
Pink aurora is always 17
Pink aurora and her perpetual void
Pink aurora will never change
Pink aurora will never change

Upside Down

He said it was like being trapped in the Upside Down
Cold saltiness leaked from the ceiling
and dripped onto his forehead in his sleep
Birds flew under his feet and the sun never rose
People there were impervious to sea water
and human perplexity
And the only way to make sense of his existence
was to lose sense of all existing meanings

I told him it was like being trapped in the Upside Down
Tears fell from Heaven often in April
and too much of it could flood an entire village
Fish lived in the unfathomable and if we went in too deep it would kill us
People here were impervious to sea water
and human perplexity
And the only way to comprehend the purpose of life
was to let go a little of the purpose of life

We've been to each other's Upside Down
with the meanings of our own Upside Down in our suitcases
We are made of these very small moments
that happened in our own and each other's worlds,
every one of them an escape
that saves us from the wounded place we live in

Perhaps there's a cliff at the end of both our worlds
that when we jump we would fly
and meet each other in the middle of two ends
where gravity exists in all directions
where everything finally makes sense
where the only thing I would drown in is his eyes

Middle

Written on 24/03/2017 for Fiction Writing Course, City University of Hong Kong
Word Limit: 2000
Graded: A+

Elisa was awoken by a loud noise of something shattering against the marble tiles. She got up and went into the kitchen from which the sound came, hoping it wasn’t the new set of wine glasses (on sale) she bought a week ago from Francfranc. In the corner right next to the sink, she found her cat curled up, pupils dilated with its fur standing on its back. She turned her head to look for the aftermath of the cat’s startle at the siren of an ambulance outside her house. Thank God, she sighed with a slight sense of relief. It was just the mug that Gregory gave her last year on her 41st birthday. She lifted the blinds and red lights projected onto the walls in her living room. It was parked in front of Mr. Donald’s house. Elisa cleaned up the mess on the floor and poured herself a cup of warm water into a mug she had taken out from the cupboard. The ghost of the lights tinted the cup crimson. Elisa wrapped her hands around the source of warmth, trying to cover the disturbing red that burnt her eyes even though she knew it would still go on the back of her hands. Instead, she only managed to conceal what was printed on the mug. International Child Service. And a picture of a beacon. “It’s alright. Mr. Donald has been very sick,” she tried to calm her cat down by stroking its head. She went back to bed with the blinds up while the siren of the ambulance faded in the background. Elisa watched as the red lights that filled up her house turn from brick red to the red in a flame that’s about to burn out. She remembered. She remembered perfectly the hue of each shade of red, every one of them vivid and violent, bearing with it a different story.

The alarm went off before Elisa could even get some quality sleep. Ugh, Elisa resented. She got changed while the bacon was sizzling in the pan, and shuffled to the shelf to check for voice messages on the telephone, then back into the kitchen to put cat food into the metallic bowl on the floor. She did everything within 60 seconds like it was a ritual. You have. One. Voice mail. From. Greg. “Morning gorgeous, I’ll be done with the meeting before 12 today, let’s meet for lunch? Craving sushi from that Japanese place across the fishing shop. Call me back, love you.” Elisa emptied the plate of the tiny bit of burnt scrambled egg into the bin and put everything else into the sink. She left the house.

“Morning boss,” Glenn greeted Elisa at the reception, “is it too early for the news of Nessa’s return to the centre?” He handed her a folder and a cup of Starbucks’ coffee. Hot, black, grande – Elisa’s I’ll-have-the-usual. “What’s it about this time?” She pushed the door into her office while Glenn was behind her, updating her on the situation. “Foster parents are moving to Australia,” Glenn held the door while he was talking to her, ready to go back to his desk. Elisa put down her bag and the cup of coffee, then opened the folder Glenn just gave her, “Send her in. Let me talk to her,” Elisa’s eyes were fixed on the folder the entire time. “Thanks, by the way,” she finally looked up at Glenn and flashed him a smile out of politeness.

There were three knocks on the door, even though it was made entirely of glass. Entering was a teenage girl with a studded belt and a pair of cherry-red Dr. Martens. “I swear it’s not me this time,” she held up both her hands as if she was forced into surrender. “I know. Have a seat,” Elisa said in a collected voice, “I’m just trying to tell you what’s gonna happen next.” Five foster homes, twice in the juvenile, Nessa’s name was the only thing the kids talked about ever since she came here. “So,” Elisa cleared her throat, “I’ll just fast-forward past the bullshit. Your new foster parents are bringing you to Canada.” Elisa never for once patronized teenagers. She’d been there. This couple had been waiting in line to be foster parents for years, they believed that in a good environment, anyone could raise good kids. “But I can take care of myself,” Nessa objected. “Well, sadly, that’s not what the law believes. Unless you're 18, you can’t do whatever you please. For now, you’re still a flightless bird,” Elisa said. “Funny how you associate me with a flightless bird when the only thing I’ve ever been was a bird without legs,” Nessa remarked. For a second, Elisa didn’t know what to say. Her mind was instantly dragged back to the memory of 10 years earlier when Nessa first arrived at the centre. She was 7, her hair still honey blonde, crying over an injured bird she found in the garden. Elisa was still an agent back then. “Leave it alone to die, you can’t stop nature,” a 17-year-old said to all the kids surrounding the bird. “No, we don’t abandon anyone,” Elisa said to that teenager in a loud voice so that others could hear her, too. Elisa took the bird home that night and invited Nessa over so as to give the poor little girl the assurance she needed. We don’t abandon anyone, Elisa repeated to herself. The legless bird died three days later.

She closed the folder and looked at Nessa, “If there’s nothing else, you can go back to your room and unpack your bags. Meanwhile we’ll deal with the legal documents before you get to live in the new home.” Nessa was dismissed and sent back to her dormitory room.

The phone rang and Elisa suddenly remembered she forgot to return Gregory’s call. “Hey, when should I pick you up?” Gregory asked. “Hey, sorry babe, I forgot to tell you I have a meeting till 1. We can grab lunch tomorrow, yeah?” Elisa suggested. “Sure,” Gregory said in a monotone. “I’m so, so, so, sorry,” she wondered how people did it so easily. “It’s cool,” he tried to hide the disappointment in his voice. “See you tonight babe,” she waited for him to say something. Gregory hung up. Elisa thought of the bird. We don’t abandon anyone. She thought of her helpless effort in providing care for whatever she had taken in. Perhaps this was why she was a child service agent, not a foster parent.

The emergency bell rang, Ugh, she rolled her eyes, and went to the canteen. Two boys were yelling at each other while others were holding them down. One’s nose was bleeding and the other’s cheek scraped. A small area of the floor was filled with red droplets. They weren’t red, to be exact, they looked a few shades paler. It was almost like blood-orange. It was still vibrant and violent. It was so violent that she had to look away like how her eyes were blinded by the sunlight reflected on the red paint that afternoon on Golden Gate Bridge. It was a distant past and she could only recall the event in fragments. Elisa was 5. Her mother was driving along Golden Gate Bridge with her at the back. Elisa read in the news 2 decades later that her mother was driving towards Marin County. That afternoon was so hot that even with the air-con turned on at maximum, the interiors could still make a first-degree burn on the human skin. And the leather seats were tinted scarlet by the reflection of the bridge. The colors kept changing but they stayed in the range of the shades of red. Her mother spoke in such a low voice that Elisa believed it was more to herself than to Elisa. Mother was weeping, Elisa faintly remembered, she kept repeating, “I can’t do this anymore.” She pulled over in the middle of the bridge, under the boiling sun, opened all the windows, and went out of the car and hauled her weary body to the edge of the fence. Elisa remembered that shade of red. Elisa remembered perfectly because it stayed constant for over 5 hours before someone came to bring her to the police station where the color still stained her eyes.

 The disciplinary team sorted out the fight and escorted the boys back to their rooms for counselling. Before they left, one kid turned to Elisa and said, “I’m not gonna stay here forever, you know.” And he was right. Everyone was on a journey, and Elisa was in the middle of it. She’s a middle-aged woman living a middle-class life being left in the middle of a bridge, stuck between the decisions of leaving a man she had no time for, but was ideal enough to settle down with. She was not sad, but she certainly wasn’t happy. Happy is not happy unless juxtaposed with sorrow. She was in the middle of that complex.

Elisa was packing for the weekend. Nessa refused to go to Canada unless accompanied by Elisa. Nessa wanted her to be there when she first stepped foot into a foreign country. Elisa thought of the cat. She thought of Gregory and everything she was going to leave behind here. It was only a short trip, she would be coming back soon, but she hadn’t travelled out of the country since graduation. She also thought of the memories of Nessa living with her before the authority found out that Nessa had tried to run away from foster home and kill herself. She took good care of Nessa, but not good enough to make her feel loved.

They boarded the plane, along with the foster parents. Nessa picked the window seat while Elisa sat beside her. The parents were in the front. The couple held hands during the take-off and constantly turned around to check on Nessa. The plane was several thousand miles above the ground. Elisa looked at the scars on Nessa’s wrist and pondered over her rebellious and self-destructive years. Whatever Nessa had been through, it must’ve hurt. It must’ve hurt like San Francisco. “Do you ever wonder what your parents are like?” Nessa turned to Elisa and asked. “It is nothing but a memory, and so there is no reason to linger over it now,” Elisa replied with a motherly smile. Elisa reached out her hand to hold Nessa’s. This was the first time Elisa found comfort in transit. She was in-between places and time zones, but she was going somewhere. They looked out the window and the sun was setting –

It was red. The entire plane was red.

It was perfect.

Our Hiding Place

I could listen to this all day
The ship horn howling with its pack
If I laid very still on the asphalt
I could feel the whole world tremble
The water looked like porcelain
when I tilted my head sideways,
undisturbed and slightly below eye-level
I pressed my knuckles on the rough bed
like how sculptors dug their thumbs
to make space for their creations’ eye sockets
And felt the coarse remains of the cements
like blind people felt their beloved’s faces with their fingertips
Every part of it has been touched by me
Every part has my imprints on it

This is an abandoned town
only the stray dogs remember
and only the ramshackle furniture knows
how anything could be orphaned overnight
Perhaps everything has a story that could break our heart
and perhaps a place could have more feelings than me
But the person who used to own it
isn’t here to love it
and must have plenty of places to go
but no places to be

I wondered, if one would want to wander here,
if one would want to get lost here with me,
one would be another extinguished soul,
a soul that was always burning
I thought maybe if I stayed put in one place long enough,
he would find me,
just like what I was taught to do
when I lost my mother in a crowded place
But I never really thought about what to do
when the both of us were lost
and standing in the same place,

waiting

                                  separately.

I’ve made this place for you to love
and for us to feel connected even by distance
I've grown to believe that
we shall not seek
and we shall not wait –
Soulmates will eventually meet
because they have the same hiding place.

2013

仙蹤 (上)

我們膝對膝說著喃喃細語

兩人思想用的辭彙是顛倒的南北極

你以為自己還擁有的甚麼

都只是似曾相識

你可曾試過用靈魂解讀

我掏心挖肺寫的情詩

那些綿延不斷的台詞

演繹了我最勇敢的時刻

我們的強迫症

是留戀早已痊癒的灼傷

希望疼痛不會離去

因為這是我們僅有的甜蜜

你說你曾經很愛我

我回答我也很愛你

我的語言沒有過去式

這個文明的缺陷也是一種浪漫

儘管在我身邊很安全

你總會跑到雙人床的沿崖

我呼喚著親愛的

因為我們的愛還沒有名字

那天水晶燈在下雨

站在正下方

頭髮是乾的

卻沾濕了雙眼

一杯馬丁尼的開場白

在把它乾了前

已決定了我們的結局

所以也不必再追問

或許命運是一個害羞的小女孩

只懂得暗示

又或許這只是鐵樵夫

找回自己心臟那短短的一幕

我們猜不透卻又很快樂

原來有一種有緣無份

是兩個已斷絕來往的人

面對面說再見