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?