Aquarians

Sundays, borrowed from you
but I always forget to return.

I almost tell you about my mother,
how she drinks her wine in a coffee mug,

and my father, how he leaves
before the dining table is cleared.

But we have learned never to ask each other

questions that don't belong to us.

From my lips to yours,

an apology.

The rest of us
untouched.

Demeter

Mom —

There are things I don’t understand.

Things about love,

the way it clings like wet laundry,

heavy on the skin;

the way it wraps itself tight,

until the air grows so thick,

each breath feels like a battle.

How can something so soft

feel so suffocating?

I love you, but I hate you.

And I hate that I hate you.

It’s a knot I can’t untangle,

a weight I can’t carry without breaking.

You say you love me,

but your love is too heavy—

it presses down,

until I can’t gasp for oxygen.

I wish you could see it—

how you twist into shapes

you think you should be,

only to feel whole.

You say you’re smart, but you refuse to grow.

You say you’re learning,

but you hide behind lessons that teach you nothing.

You’re stuck,

and you pull me

into the quicksand with you.

There are days when I understand

why Dad needed space,

why he wandered into someone else’s arms

to find a place to breathe.

I don’t forgive him,

but I feel it too.

It makes sense now, in the aftermath,

why he slipped away from a prison

you call home.

Your disease spreads like vines,

seeping into every corner of the house.

It’s the way you need me

that chains me down.

How am I supposed to love anyone

when love feels

like a cage I can’t escape?

I moved out

into a room no bigger than my shadow,

four walls that don’t close in

but hold me steady.

I stare at the ceiling,

and it feels like the sky.

Here, silence doesn’t smother.

It cradles me gently,

gives me space to remember who I am.

In this emptiness, I found

myself again.

I am not running away,

but I’m not coming back.

Maybe distance is the thread

for stitching up the broken promises

none of us has ever kept.

— Your daughter

Hera

Dad —

There are things I don’t understand.  

Things about the oceans,  

the gods, the seasons.  

How atoms spin endlessly in the void,  

how we breathe in chaos and exhale  

stillness.  

I used to think these mysteries were beautiful,  

but now, they are nothing more than noise,  

like static—  

and the voices in my head,  

questions closer to home

I cannot answer.

Like, why do we love the ones who hurt us  

and hurt the ones we love?  

Why does betrayal only bloom where trust once grew?  

At what age does a child learn the art of deception?  

Is it something you taught me without words?

The world owes Mom an awful lot.  

She suffocates us with her giving,  

and I wonder—  

Do you see it?  

Do you know what it costs her  

to fill this empty house with

pieces of herself?

I wonder—  

if all of us are victims of this world,  

who is the perpetrator?  

Is it fate? Is it you?  

Is it me who’s part of the silence,

holding in truth like smoke I refuse  

to release?

I can't help but think—  

Why do you stay in a home full of ghosts?  

Does love spoil, like milk

left too long in the fridge?  

Do lies have an expiry date too?  

Or do they sit, festering, until they poison  

everything around them?

Gravity has a way of making me

feel small.  

Every waking moment, I drag

my feet through a river of questions  

I know I can’t answer.  

There’s a storm beneath my ribs—  

I can’t tell if it’s rage or grief,  

or if it’s particles colliding

on what was once a crowded dance floor,  

but it’s drowning me all the same.  

I’m standing in the ruins of something  

I thought was unbreakable,  

and I no longer know how to rebuild.

 

Mom has given everything—  

her skin, her breath,  

her heart until it’s threadbare,  

and still, she stands.  

I don’t know if I will ever understand  

what made you tear at the seams,

why you chose to shatter  

the woman who gave us everything.  

And in the end, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.

— Your daughter

triangle of sadness

everything i wanted you to tell me

dissolved in a breath of salt.

this year was a cup

half empty.

i am only ever water— 

one part ocean, one part rain,

endlessly dwelling

in the labyrinth of blue.

each step forward is swallowed

by the tides behind.

i woke up from a dream  

(in which i spoke a foreign language),

to the the vowels slipping

through my fingers like vapor,

and the words returning

to the sea like storm.

my longing guts

reach for the door.

on the other side is a season—

she can leave or linger if she wishes.

oh alien planets! they never

have to know what comes after spring.

but my moon pulls me back,

the more i push, the more i drift.

like the ocean, i return

to where i began.

I Wish I Could Go Back to the Two Times I Loved You

Sitting at the two ends of your couch, we were guessing the colors of our eyes. What a dangerous game. As we moved closer and closer, the bourbon you poured got the best of us. I didn’t know chaos could be so quiet.

And once, you came back from your trip, and showed up at my apartment unannounced. You showed me the black and white films you developed. I had never understood their aesthetics, until a photograph of me came up - a Saturday morning at yours, still in my pajamas holding the cup of coffee you brewed me. I never saw colors the same way again.

Interstellar

The anatomy of constellations on your couch -
our skins mantling two solar systems, one running
endlessly after another but could never get there
fast enough.
Our chests exposed like two caskets 
holding pain as if it was all
we were made of.

Ambience tapped on your window,
you let Winter swallow it whole.
I stared into your eyes and remembered darkness.
So I begged you to set me on fire
until my bones become stardusts,
dissolving into the night
into you.

You poured us your favorite scotch as you watched
me burn,
then you rained gently on me
like early summer that tempered the flame.
My body, so honest, I am a walking overdose of pain.
I can't lie to myself. I chase it again
and again, and again.

Aren't my legs tired of running
in an orbit I don't belong,
my arms tired of reaching
your hand that won't open.
I swear this is the last time I come down
like meteors poured from your cosmos.
I know now, I can't hold what won't hold me.

Self-portrait

Some years have escaped

between the chase.

We can run but we don't have to.

Remember how much violence it took 

us to become this gentle,

and how much youth it took

us to become this wise.

There are two hundred thousand words in our language

but a million more to ourselves held behind our

teeth, reeking of profanity

and tobacco. When the smoke loses

its density, we can open our eyes

and we don't have to

be afraid. Our skins reflecting off the sunrise,

tomorrow is on the cusp of a breath.

We can drive to my studio in the city

and make art of ourselves -

my version of me in my leather jacket,

your version of you with your cigarette drags.

Each brushstroke,

a little bit of love and a little bit of intoxication,

we forgive

ourselves for everything

we did not become, and we don't have to pretend

it didn't hurt.

The Boy

I’ll be the wallflowers you saw and said // you loved in the movie set // I’ll be the printed sky // in which your ravens fly // the vocalist singing on top of her lungs // in the band you no longer play the drums // I’ll be the only motion that is found // in this picture-perfect paper town. // If you can’t tell me lies and you can’t speak the truth // I’ll be the boy who cries wolf for you.

Glitters and Gold

tom -


i thought of you again in the sea, all alone, when the riptide was sending me north and south all at once. it’s funny how the mind associates things with other things, how i associate this near-death experience with mischief night on your bed. i cried after we’ve made love, thinking i had a tumor in my stomach, and that would be the last time we had each other. you held me close from behind and said we would go through this together. that night, surfing in your blue, stained sheets, your breath in mine, i couldn’t help but feel estranged.


do you remember resting your head on my lap, it was a tuesday after our regular nine to nine, still in your wrinkled shirt and green tie - my favorite one that brings out the emerald in your eyes, you told me about the things you saw through the keyhole your father did with his mistress when you were a child? you said you had stopped believing in love since then, and some months later you said to me, you loved me. my heart stung.


it’s been close to two years since we were in touch. the rain in spring gets me out of bed every time, awakening a part of me i hid away. the moist air of april smells as if fresh blossoms have filled this armful of nothingness with bouquets. there is so much to reminisce about, call me crazy, stupid and impulsive, sometimes it still baffles me why i left.


and in some ways, i don’t want to look back on my bashful meltdown, the time when we were surfing in cheung sha. how the tides rose, the sun pierced through my eyes, and i could feel myself sweating inside my wetsuit. how i wasn’t far from giving up when the current choked me with a passion. the grunting of my disbelieve and the roaring of the waves harmonized, performing beethoven’s “ode to joy”.


you used to make fun of me and call me d minor, remember?


how ironic, because d minor is the most melancholy of all keys.


that was our second time surfing together, the second time you witnessed the monstrosity in me breaking out and breaking down violently. you fought your way back in the ocean to grab my board. you said it was alright, and that you would stay right beside me to keep me safe. then i said to you, a rhetorical, « mais pourquoi sommes-nous à mille océans l’un de l’autre ? ». your face, perplexed, not because you didn’t understand my french - the french i learned from classes while i burned the midnight oil, from conversing with pretentious parisians i met in wine tasting, from studying the classical tragedy to master the art of realism.


what i said, it is unswerving. i have been roaming the world. drenched in south beach in miami and drove recklessly in california; floated in the clear blue in the bahamas; been in the mountains in japan and seen snow for the first time; sat in absolute stillness in the bali bushes and listened to grasshoppers escape from the cobweb; drank the world’s best baijiu in china and danced with the local tribe. i have been half the globe away, by myself, yet it made me feel whole.


our fickle feelings mirrored the uncertainties of your new found business. i tried to hold it all together painstakingly, because a love like this was hard to find. i asked if you were happy when we were eating at the restaurant, you said you were half happy. i bit my tongue as my heart twitched. it’s funny how the mind associates things with other things, how i associate the closing with the opening scene, how it all started when you bought me a rose before you walked me to dinner. it was a young bud yearning to bloom. then it started to drizzle - on my handbag, on the jacket you used to shelter both of us from the rain, on the lonely sprout in the plastic wrap. it smelled like spring.


i joined a book club a few weeks ago and picked up reading again. today, i was reading “the merchant of venice” and in the original editions of the book that was published in 1596, read, “all that glisters is not gold”. romanticism is weightless but love is what grounds us. i chose myself, i will always choose myself, because i love deeply - you and me, and it is more than the weight of gold.

- demi

Purgatory

I wake up afloat in my wooden boat.

The sky, with a tint of dusk, is as big as

my eyes can contain

my unbounded dreams.

The breath of heaven on my cheeks

speaks a foreign language,

almost inaudible to translate.

The clouds at arm’s length,

untroubled.

They whisper secrets to remind me of why

I cast off.

As the sun sets beneath her throne,

it is but faded glory worn from her hefty crown.

And as the moon illuminates the vastness of the unknown,

it has become clearer than ever before -

a drop of blood in the ocean does not change

the blue of Adriatic water,

a thunderstorm in the lifeless desert does not flourish

the dull Algerian sands.

And in the sea of limbo,

if anyone could

have saved me,

it would have been you.