1. I just returned from San Francisco, with a heavy, heavy heart. Here is to the burden of existence that us the lonely Other bear in our shoulders, or in C's case, in the scar on his chest, the burnt on his arm, the tattoos that run across his back and his sleeve. Here is to the lonely hearts of the lonely existence, when we keep asking why it is so hard just to love yet never imagine to be able to find an answer. Here is to the whispers throughout the night and the dry laughs and the pain on our backs and at one point I wanted to cry but stopped myself.
Us the Lonely Colored Ones, the Estranged Others of a world that doesn't want us here. He changed his name, removed his flesh, distorted his body, the only thing left might have been his continuum darkened heart that expressed itself through the black ink across his body. One afternoon I sat on his bed staring at him injecting himself on the stomach. The needle drowned into his flesh so deep it felt like my blood drips through my fingers. He said, "when I had my surgery I would die if I don't do my injection." My mouth dried and I let out a nervous laugh. "I just don't understand why one would go through so much pain." Then I lowered my voice and stopped, but he looked at me. The red dot from the injection on his stomach looked at me. The hole on my chest aches.
Us the Lonely Colored Ones, the Abandoned Others of a world that could have killed our parents. I could have never been born hadn't my parents survive the war. Inside my vein my homeland bleeds and inside my ears my people's cries never stopped. The stair to where I'm at right now was built on the flesh and bones of the (un)dead, many of them could have been my sisters, my brothers, my uncles, my aunts, my mothers, my fathers. And the flesh and bones of someone else's sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, mothers, fathers. I stood on the corpses of my homeland, crying for the pains that hurt so badly but I don't understand, writing about the unnamed people who live the life I never had to experience just so that I would never have to. My hands are tied my eyes wet and my heart dropped. The hole that grows on my chest has the color of unmourned grievance.
Here is to us the lonely colored ones for whom the world is a violent place. Our bodies resemble the destroyed rain forests and our minds the empty rivers. We don't have the words for love, our languages were colonized. We lost our belonging, there has never been. We don't know how we would live, there is yet an example. Our colored faces painted with loss but we never give up finding. Our colored bodies carved with fear but we don't give up fighting.
For the lonely colored ones like us, life is just another form of undead. So we try, and we laugh, and we cry.
2. I told him cigarettes materialize my inescapable dark thoughts bursting out from my throat.
He said it tastes disgusting.
Suicidal tendency is in-visible, un-heard of
Death is a silent note that never stops singing
Even when the funeral breaks.
This is where all my demons hide
They sit on my chest so tightly it hurts whenever I make room for love
They mourn so loudly I couldn't hear any other songs
And I came to him
only to find out my demons are tamed.
San Diego, April 21st, 2014.
I wrote this poem for a dear friend of mine. We have always been kind and supportive of each other, and there is this comfortable vibe between us that sometimes makes me wonder if it looks like I'm just whatever. You know, we always have different types of friends, and some of them we really don't care about. I would hate for him to think that he doesn't matter to me, or in fact, I would hate for myself to not show him that despite making fun of him and bullying him from times to times, I really appreciate him.
So this time in SF, we had some deep conversations that I kind of avoid having with people, I'm just not comfortable with the idea. And because of that, I paid more attention to what he has been showing me but I didn't take into account. I guess I wasn't comfortable enough with my body privileges to really think about what he has to go through in his transition. And that makes me think of my own repressed thoughts about my homeland, my family, and many other lives that are struggling to fit in with this world. The displacement of Native peoples, the industrialization of Amazon rain forest, and how we as queer (trans)people of color we have the "wrong" skin to be in. Witnessing and listening to what he has been doing and would have to do in order to find and maintain his real identity, it makes me feel shameful for all the privileges that I have, and thus "my demons are (only) tamed." People have those dark corners that I never have to deal with, and it reminds me that my life is still very fortunate.
I guess this poem caused some misunderstandings between us, and it saddens me very much, but I refuse to take the cruelty that comes from his own insecurities. I guess this is nobody's faults, but the deed has been done. I guess my demons are not that tamed, and our demons just clashed.
