here, take my hand, in spring we dance

a poem for Quyen

I am tired of being angry, my
dear. i am tired of deadening
your listening ears with stories
about my ex and her abusers
and my friends and their abusers
and child abuse and sexual assaults
and other forms of gender violence.

How many queer women  

out there are carrying stories

about the men

hauntingly

apologetically 

because violence was inflicted onto
them they are not going to depend on
vengeance and indignation to feel safe

forgetfulness coded as healing coded as

giving up coded as moving on

this is trauma: folded into the size of

our palm, pushed down our throat, we

swallow it dry like a pill promised to

get us better, we are not

better, just

forgetful

hauntingly forgetful

with a lot of questions the answers

never bother coming along willingly

like why are we nervous, stressed out,

silent, disoriented, tearful, drunk, smoking,

doing drugs, failing, quitting jobs, fucking

around, afraid, afraid, afraid, uncertain,

vomiting, starving, cutting, crying to sleep,

sleeping all day, trying to fix douchebags, being

preyed on, abused, abused, abused,

emotionally, psychologically, physically

have we become abusers yet ourselves

or did the girl cry wolf

if the girl fucking cries wolf, there is only %2 chance
that she lies. the wolf came, it did
come and it wears a man’s face standing protected alongside
those coming to condemn the girls’ lies

i am so sorry, my love, I am exhausted and
exhausting, my mood swings abruptly from
smiling and dancing around performing
feminine gestures and sounds into muffled
screams and homicidal thoughts. before you,
my anger is what kept me going I am not leaving
until this world is cleaned of monsters with sadistic
smiles and blood on the corners of their mouths.
before you I only know love when damaged girls
and sad boys fell onto my laps, I tried to put the
pieces of us together like solving a puzzle; these
broken needles etched upon my veins three inches 
too shallow to get me addicted. I said “sorry love 
didn’t fucking save us please disappear" 

and they did, they disappear with their love
their pain remains

I am so sorry, my love. at times I hear you crying

from the other side of a thick wall of glass. the

human emotions that I grew wary of, the last time

I cried it was for a pain that wasn’t mine. I am so

sorry my love, my love is too easily attainable at

times I wonder if I too has mistaken love with the

tenderness of a constant wound this world drapes

upon the female body once every full moon. do i

mean “I love you” to all the sad strangers like “i

see your pain” or do I mean “yes, I love you

despite the pain or do I mean “I love pains”

or do I mean “we are both pains”

here’s the thing:

love is not supposed to be painful. don’t trust

people and films and suicidal music or teen magazines that

set you up for wounds. they are the wolves that came. Cry

as they come.

here’s another thing: you are not meant to fix brokenness

or damaged goods. you are not meant to be broken open

just so empathy can flow out of you like juice or blood from

a wounded crack, born or made, given or inflicted.

I am so sorry, my love. this was supposed to
be a love poem about you, the trips we took, the
journeys we shared. how about this, here’s you, sleeping
with your head crooked on the head of the passenger’s seat
one early morning we took a road trip from Los Angeles to
the Bay; the blue sky runs a world-wide marathon
triumphing the ever-ending highways. here’s the sun and
the wind, shades of green surrounding us with everlasting
fields and flowers and the spring they bring. it
didn’t hide the sign to camp Pendleton the military
base the refugee camp the preservation of Native land
once upon a time, thousands of people who look like
your parents and my parents arrived I am not so sure
if the camp is currently unoccupied.

I am so sorry, my love, would you love me more if
I know any less about the horrors running in the soil
in every tree branches, in the air we breathe; how else can
we celebrating a fine spring day, how can I make a
beautiful poem about love if all that ever uttered
from my mouth is always remnants of crimes so foul.

I am in love, but it is never a matter of love; so fiercely
may it give me the strength to create and find beauty
with you in a world shaped by apologies

I am grateful for you, my love, for holding my cold hands

and listening to me when my voice resembles much

more of crying, for asking questions rather than giving

answers for what I am not sure if I’m asking, for staying

still and yet finding me here.

______________________________________

heartbreak on an airplane

Mama asks if I'm bringing my broken heart with me oversea 

"No, dear Mommy," I said,
"I never bring anything with me"
"Not even memories," I said,
"or things that resemble it:
all I have is 28 lbs checking luggage,
a laptop,
and a bag full of cigarettes."
"Mama do not worry about me,"
I said. "My heartbreak is too
yesterday and if it isn't you
still won't hear me crying
about it.
I will be crying on my way back,
perhaps, silently
on my seat while watching a movie,
in the dark, when the
passengers next to me have fallen asleep.
When the airplane
accelerates and there is but inescapable sky,
clouds, and the
last of sunlight burning my left arm
through the window, I
will be crying,
perhaps."

Mama asks, "Is it solved then?
Who caused it?
Do you intend to leave it?"

Oh dear mommy. Who else can cause a broken heart
but an once-lover who left.
A girl
broke your daughter's heart
but I cannot tell how I really feel.
So don't worry mommy, you won't hear it from me.
You won't hear me cry, because it's me who left,
after countless of
failed
goodbyes.
She didn't want to hear me cry,
so mommy, I'm crying alone
on the airplane
that will take the pain
away from where it could stand
and be rooted.
I'm carrying
nothing but
a broken heart
to the flight and soon
I will also
leave it behind

You

I don't care
        how many
                people
         will see you
                  like this
                         eyes
                        closed
                          heart
                       beating
                          like
          broken drums
               tilted chin
      hair drenched
                      in
              sweat
       open lips

Your silhouette.                                        

carves into the night

 an undying light. 

Stars on your skin and 

moon in the small of your 

back. I worship you like 

the God the 

world has 

lost.

In that moment

I know a part of me

had died

For I

Will never be able

to love anyone

like that

again

Not even

you.

Especially

You.


_______________________

once upon a time I used to save my text messages into the draft folder of my cellphone. Nowadays I cant do that anymore, iphones and their real time technology will always let the other person know to expect a message being written, and I'm not 23 anymore I shouldn't be doing it. So I write poems instead. Bad poetry, but it's better than forgetting. I started to forget you and I didn't want to. I was asked why do my poems write a lot about the body and the crashings of the bodies, and I didn't know what to do but laughing because I didn't write poems I was just trying to describe my wounds and make them pretty otherwise all I've got left of you is silence and unhealed scars. But it's my punishment, because I forgot who you are. 

Apologies

They always arrive late, sometimes not at all

or worse,

when they're no longer wanted.

______________________________________ 

the truth about love

The truth is
when people stop talking to each other, 

they're not necessarily doing so out of spite
they are just trying to be kind
to themselves.

______________________________________
 

Wisdom

Repeat after me:

I'm grateful for breathing and

not in chronical pain

I'm grateful for being alive

and what I believe in

I'm grateful for have blessed and sinned

To feel love with all my senses

and let it

wither in vain

______________________________________

Promises

I can't change you, I can only love you. So I'm willing to cut short my sentences, because it takes you all this silence. So I'm willing to step three steps back and not one forward, because it gives you all this space. So I'm willing to remember for the both of us, because memories are never a safe space for you. So I'm willing to sell myself short, because everybody was too occupied with not doing that they forget to check on you. So I'm willing to sit with all this pain because that's the only thing I know how to do when you don't talk. And I don't want to make you talk because I might have not known the price you'd have to pay. 

But if you don't want me to stay, there's only so much.

 ______________________________________

Summer fling, in the end

Of those days: staying up all night, kisses and touches, endless conversations, catching up on the years we missed, somehow we exist in the margins of each other's life, ocean-wide apart, "sex and cigarerettes on our breath again," the light on your skin and the curves that suffocate me, mutual dirty little secret, i'm a lonely person so i do lonely things, but i want you, i hope thats enough, its better be enough, i got nothing else

It was our 63 days together yesterday, i hope you're happy

I been passing out at night and waking up when the sun's up; i been holding on to the lingering savory of summer on my tonge, youre the summer babe I'll forever miss, i been seeing our mundane life trying to crush us back to the lives in which i dont exist in yours and you dont exist in mine; remember to eat well and drink more tea, I smoke more nowadays because i dont have things to do with my lips, kisses turn ashes, i wish you were here

---- the 2 months anniversary that happened when we stopped talking

Warning signs

I ask Siri: "how do I go to her heart?"

Siri said:
"Go straight this way and make a right when you see a wound, this is what's left of a lover who didn't want to talk"
"Make a left to avoid traumas and the untouched terrain of memories she doesn't want woken up"
"Don't go to where you can see the scars invisibly bump up on her skin"
"Or the scratches from those she want to forget"
"This is the place where she keep all the demons, make a u turn if you don't wish to encounter"
"Make a detour to where you start and exit the trip"
"There is no way to proceed to her heart if you wish to avoid the demons"

______________________________________ 

those days in seoul

1. Burn at Itaewon: that night I sat by myself in a cigar bar getting drunk and listening to live jazz


Baby I think of you, I think of you 24/7
Your cheek and your lips and the way your eyes shaped like crescent moon when you smile Your hair flowing like tidal waveYour tiny fingers leaving marks on my skin And your velvet skin warms my fingertips I wonder how I have lived all those years before knowing the taste of your mouth or the lines of your body or the way your legs wrapping around mine Sweet stuttered breath stuck on the back of your throat Our names together make so much sense I stop questioning all the dissimilarities and start naming all the possibilities I want you, want you, want you like I who have been lost was given a map to a destination which I was destined to go through And I miss you, miss you, miss you like never before like all the kisses I had put on others’ mouths were lies and all the old touches were slippery like bare feet on ice like all the love poems were but eulogies for the end of fakeries and I mutter sweet love on my drunken lips not expecting it would be heard But you were there on the other line and you answered with a smile I didn’t know whatelse to say but the obvious 

I miss you, I miss you so

2. Lost at Namsan: That afternoon when I was finding my way home and saw a hill

You might not be the first nor the last girl they'll ever had but you will be the only one they can never forget
I would always be the one they put in the back of their minds, recalled only when the fine line between memory and fantasy becomes blurryBut you will remember me and I will have you and just like them I can't promise you infinity and just like me you don't want to separate dream from realitySo come and sit down and if one day we are forced to think back let's meet in the virtuality where we made all our memoriesLet's think of how much we are not supposed to be and yet we are here

3. Still across Han gang: This moment as I sit by myself on a rooftop and thinking of you

4. [I left this blank in the original. I left this blank now. Seoul is over and so are us. Are you at least sad, baby?]

______________________________________

bodyheat

1. I ran my fingers across her ribs and felt the bones in between my fingers. “You have lost so much weight,” I told her. “It’s not even cute.” She looked at me and smiled - the thin lines in the corners of her eyes slightly showed themselves. Those black, round pupils underneath her thick eyelashes always tickled something in me. I caressed the line of her body, touched her shoulders, her neck, and at one point I leaned down to kiss the tip of her shoulder blade.
“I did, didn’t I?”
I didn’t say anything, and just traced my hands down to her thighs, closing down my palms around them to measure. My hands encountered her hip bones along the way, and I couldn’t stop but visited them again.
“What is this?”
That was a rhetoric question and she knew it.
“Come here, a bit closer, so I can cuddle you.”
“Why don’t you come this way.” She teased, but leaned in anyway. I wrapped my arms around her, ever so gently so the weight of my arm wouldn’t harm the fragility of her bones underneath. I kissed the side of her cheek and we went to sleep.
I for once stopped questioning whether or not she liked my body, the way it has deviated from what it used to look like.
That was, surprisingly, friendly.

2. I wrote so many poems for her.
That day, when we let each other go like sands dripping through fingers, I didn’t think there would be a day this stopped hurting. But it did. Five years is a long time, and every time I went back I was eager to dig down into my memories, to find the exact notebook with the exact picture of the exact moment in which she and I were looking at each other with those ingenuous eyes, each trying to read the other person’s mind, but we ended up failing anyway. Young lovers were supposed to be full of doubts, insecurities, and loss. We were not supposed to be looking for or at the same things.
I never regret having loved my inside out two times over. There was nobody in this world I have ever, ever wanted that much. I told her many times after many later heartbreaks, “I will be fine, bluebird. I survived you.” She said to me, “I am but a memory. No one can compete with that. But I’m not real, and these people, they are real. You love them. Stop comparing them with me.” But I was, and I am, because if my skin does not hurt because it longs for their touches, because if my heart does not throb when I hear their voice, and if I don’t have to stop to think whether or not I should kiss them, then I will be reminded of how fear has consumed me the day I realized I have never wanted anyone so damn much.

3. I know why.
Loving her is like tasting freedom on your tongue. She is not a her nor a him. I have that tendency to gender my desire in that way - calling her a her gives a certain image and feelings that I could not achieve had I thought of her as a man. But I was not falling into her because of her gender - I fell for her because of her gentleness and the way she softens my pain, the way her little fingers held on to mine and led me through those old bookstores, the way she shyly and earnestly told me all the sad stories of her life, all the people who have failed her and how much she missed them, all the lost loves and if I’m not a rock how could I not have listened, and felt, and fell for it.
I felt for her because for the first time it made sense that I should be in love with a human being with all the flaws and brokenness. I felt for her because for the first time it made sense that I should always feel this way when I am with a person whom I don’t know but would regardless feel strongly about. It made sense - this is how desire works. Almost sacred, always innocent, meaningful, and full of thoughts.
She stripped my femaleness and maleness away and all I’ve got left was a heart that kept beating in a way I could not control. But she who had tucked my hair on my ears and kissed my eyelids, she who made me feel as though I can forgive my hatred for being in the wrong body or the wrong size, comfortable with the length of my hair, and stopped questioning how I should look like the moment I saw my reflection in her eyes.
The sad thing is, I don’t think I helped her as much.

4. She wrote a poem for me.
And a story.
And that’s, somehow, is enough.
She made me me.

______________________________________

5 am

for you, it always is

I repeat stories about lost lovers like commiserating the ghosts of an once-lived intimacy
The warmth etched onto my skin burns like a fainted scar.
How we wanted to forget those who failed to love us, but never remember the faces of those we failed. Were they ever able to let us know that they too needed love?
If mumbling a person's name on my lips every night becomes a habit,
They, wherever they are, should feel the pain in their heart too
What is the meaning if all we ever learned about eachother is a name, so we could repeat even after we have forgotten everything else?

______________________________________ 

love poem

Lay on your back

Stand on your feet

Speak with your eyes

Only love when you don't fear loneliness

Be grateful for who gives you things

But only trust those who come back

And love the one that stays

-things my cat taught me

Heterosexuality

I called to say goodbye

She said

But you didn't pick up

She said

As usual

We are afraid of

loving words

more than we do

curse words

Curse words are

safer to hear

because we

are not

astounded by

violence

silence

and hurtful things; in the end

we grow up preparing

ourselves for

Death

- straight men are fragile: close friend edition.

M-doh Said

She said let's swim across these oceans of sadness someday
She said we can bath in the warmth of tranquility too
That happiness might as well be a warm gun and that it sounds smart
M-doh, I don't know when or if that day will come but sometimes I think it's a blessing
for us to have come across each other when we are these growing-up fucked up kids who smoke their hearts on their lips
who drink their souls on the rock with less ice
and speak fluent apologies like
rolling a joint
saving it till either our bad days come or the world decides to go mad

That day you drank until sick when I'm gone and you sent me a poem
(Written by a poet we're both not exactly a fan of)
And it said ten years weren't enough for anyone to realize
They should have kissed someone when they still can
But they never could and never would
Because they never will

M-doh,
I thank you for all the kindness
You said to me "she will be loved" and I should have said "I'm loved"
perhaps not by those who broke my hearts
though they might have loved me failingly
But I'm loved
by all that you said or didn't
And I thought, what a coincidence that we were born
Into the same life, after all, and amongst those eight billions people in the world
We were born into the same city and might have laughed the same laughs
Best not cry the same tears

M-doh,
I still have no idea what a warm gun smells or feel like
Perhaps that's why it's like happiness
I hope you had your shot

And I bet it sounds bomb.

Blue Poem or Note on a Plane

Everyone knows that poems
Are just bits and pieces of a broken
sentence that takes too long a second to form
Refuses to leave our mouth even when the words were already
hurting the tips of our tongues
We wouldn't have said it if we could help
But just like falling in love
We wouldn't have done that if we could help
I don't compose poems
Poems compose me
It comes to me like the old warmth of a lost lover
Always familiar, always beloved
But always bitter
I almost always write when I'm flying across oceans
or missing someone i shouldn't have
(So, once or twice a year)
But everytime, language hurts
Even the music in my stuffed ears, couldn't fight against the movement of thin air
surrounding me in a question mark
I don't have an answer
My eyes are heavy and there are always too many people in my space
To many voices inside my head
I don't have an escape; the airplane is closed
Language reaches its limits when the plane starts going down
I think of all the shades of blue that I have left behind, the clouds were keeping all the tears inside, the ocean turns darker inward,
If we have the eyes of the demons, water might have been black
And it would be fine
But we have the eyes of the children that have lost their naïveté
Always lost, and always scared
But never have enough faith to speak true love
from a heart that can forgive the pains
we caused each other
We have that of those
whose poems are most likely
the broken pieces of a heart that don't know love
Water and sky and music and poems
were always blue
Sept 10, 2015
Ảnh: Bãi Sao Phú Quốc

Summer crushes

Summer is for nostalgia, crushes, and heartbreaks
Summer is for random rides around the corners, star gazing at night, long flight home
For late night conversations and early morning teas and jazzy music during the day when no one is around, you can curl up into your couch with just any book
In summer, even bad poems about love would do
Cigarette-burnt marks on your nails smell just fine, only if you don't hold it too close to his face
(That's what you think)
Just don't overwork yourself thinking about what has yet to happen
Or break your back swimming too much even when only cold water can clear your head
The clearer it is, the more room it has to store someone else's image
Fill it up with dreams that don't involve effort to convince other people that
You also deserve love
(Except you don't)
But you deserve something better than most
You deserve yourself
And even when summer hates you
Autumn is always next

Unlove

When love comes with consequences,
one must learn which love she is
going to sacrifice.

Listen, she said, my mind of love is full
of disappointment and wrecked desire. I want
someone who will leave long marks of defeat
under my skin, who will never tell me they love
me under the right circumstances, because let's
face it - there is no right circumstances. I always
came into their life at the wrong time, in the wrong
body and the wrong face. I want someone to want me,
but not so much, just enough for them to think about
the way I smile at them with all the found innocence
and forced nonchalance, to think about the way my body
unconsciously leans toward them, like they are the right
place to be, to think about my eyelashes that cover the
gaze I direct at them two times too many. Please think of me,
she said, I had cursed out loud and made you laugh and
comforted you with me being the utmost sincere of a person
that i am and of course that wasn't very attractive.
But don't think of me too much and don't be scared of
what comes next if you would have let your mind wander
closer to where our friendship is prohibited. My fingers
lingering on the top bit of your shoulders and the occasional
passing of skin on skin accidental touches weren't all that deep.
I keep rerouting myself back to where a crush is only the pure
thought of a child who was too eager for affection. I had kissed
far too many, slept with a lot and made love to some: physical
tension isn't too be afraid or worshiped, in the end, our hands
were meant to touch someone and our hearts to be broken over
something. At the right moment and with the wrong minds, sometimes
we kissed those we shouldn't and missed someone who we should
have kept beside us. 

She laughed because just like everytime, she
doesn't know what she is looking for. But please,
god, this time, please let somebody who loves her
as who she is come to her and for once she doesn't
have to question her solitude, the gentle and silent
state of being that she enjoys but is in doubt with most of the time.
Except this time, she couldn't convince herself
that the love she is going to keep is going to be the
right one.

So she learns how to unlove. 

realization

I'm better than that. Ain't I? I'm better than a wrecked mess of worn out memories and forgotten lyrics. More than a half used bottle of an once-favorite perfume. A bad handwritten poem on a piece of paper. A bunch of letters written when drunk. Badly composed poems and journals on personal blogs. More than the fear of being dismissed, or left behind, or rejected. More than the loss of the realization that I am just a person who was there.

- not crazy anymore after all these years

______________________________________

Smells like loss

A night of July, when words became meaningless and language failed to stitch her altogether: love poems ain't no salvation no more and all she could do was breathing.


She doesn't know what it means to let go of something. But she always remembered how it felt when something slipped through the cracks of her fingers. It must have not been a coincidence that human's hand got those tiny little spaces in between: one would only know to hold on if their hands were meant to cling so tightly to someone else.


She's gone - oh, she's gone. 


Honestly, she sort of wishes someone would do something as crazy as she used to do, for all those she had loved and destroyed. Don't misunderstand her, do you; after all, all she wanted was for you to pay her a little bit of attention, to call her when she didn't expect, to think about her more than she pledged you to, to show up at her door when it's nightfall and when she already gave up.

But that was just an old wish, she understands now.

(She wrote a lot then delete them all. It was pathetic, and she doesn't quite know how to speak pathetic. Vulnerability breaks all hell loose, trust sets her up for betrayal. It's okay. It's not the first time people forget her. Might as well be the last time she's concerned about such a thing.)

(She wishes she had been jealous when she had the right to. Nowadays everything only requires a few sleepless nights before she finishes convincing herself it ain't no shit.)

(It's not like it changes anything, anyway.)

(You can't quite lose things you have already lost.)


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.
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