I'm so awake
I'm buzzing
New faces
New information
To conquer
All pit stops on my long journey
Getting sucked up into these times
Getting caught up in gravity
But I keep pushing
I talk about reliance when I write
all the time
Because it never ceases
to bewilder me
We don't acknowledge
our resilience
Because we aren't granted a choice
Of possessing it or not
You see
We
have
to keep going
Or kill ourselves and
As bad as it gets
We don't do that

Maybe
Our resilience
stems off love
No matter how small
Like how you don't take all those pills simply because you imagine how it would destroy your mom dad and sisters
That love for them makes you
stick it out through your fiery hell
Sometimes life feels like hell
Or death even
though most of us don't actually know how that feels
Other times it feels like a cloudy dream
And we trek through it all
We have no choice
Well right now I'm buzzing
From the speed
I can feel it
I feel older
I feel older
Tell me when it will stop feeling so weird

I'm so awake
I'm buzzing
New faces
New information
To conquer
All pit stops on my long journey
Getting sucked up into these times
Getting caught up in gravity
But I keep pushing
I talk about reliance when I write
all the time
Because it never ceases
to bewilder me
We don't acknowledge
our resilience
Because we aren't granted a choice
Of possessing it or not
You see
We
have
to keep going
Or kill ourselves and
As bad as it gets
We don't do that

Maybe
Our resilience
stems off love
No matter how small
Like how you don't take all those pills simply because you imagine how it would destroy your mom dad and sisters
That love for them makes you
stick it out through your fiery hell
Sometimes life feels like hell
Or death even
though most of us don't actually know how that feels
Other times it feels like a cloudy dream
And we trek through it all
We have no choice
Well right now I'm buzzing
From the speed
I can feel it
I feel older
I feel older
Tell me when it will stop feeling so weird

I used to claim "I love the Rain",
But that was when I had you.
It used to be an enjoyful thing,
The things you and I could do.

And now it's just a dreary pour,
Another day with cloudy skies,
Bleak and Pointless and icy cold,
As the memory of you dies.

No comfort here, in the rain.
No soul warming ray of light.
Just soggy clothes, we cigarettes,
Bad memories of every fight.

My own little world, of grey gloom.
Feelings of Numb, empty, and anger.
Knowing I could have handled it better,
That I didn't need to be so mean to her.

But it doesn't matter anymore, not now.
The past is the past, never again.
I'll have my brooding, silent smoke,
Til the sky clears, but till then,

I used to claim, "I love the Rain",
But I'm not so sure these days.
Nothing but hurt and memories,
Wishing we hadn't parted ways.

You make my insides tumble within me.
You make that lump lodge into my throat
so I can barely speak or breathe.
You make my brain turn to
a puddle of melted ice,
waiting to be vaporized into thin air.
You make my eyes go cloudy
so that I am nearly blind.
You make this cool interior implode.
You make my sanity run a marathon
so fast I'll never catch up.
You make me crazy.
And I can't decide if this is good or bad.

There's a reason I've built my walls so high.
Are you trying to break them down,
Or are you trying to break me down?

The smoke traveled through my throat all the way to my lungs.
With cloudy thoughts and smelly clothes
I sat on the back row.
Teachers and classmates wonder alike.
I wish I could push the smell inside my Hello Kitty backpack
But I cannot, so instead, I pull myself aside.
I keep telling mommy to quit.
But does she listen? I wish she did.
A couple of years later I discovered a marvelous thing!
Although I had promised myself I would never touch a cigarette, I do.
It happened in the backyard where my volleyball fell.
I simply bent down and picked up a cigarette butt instead.

The skinny, now small cigarette-  still blushing with mom’s lipstick.
I put it in my mouth, automatically.
Just how I’ve seen her do it millions of times.
I inhale and exhale my worries away and become my mom.
Next thing I know, the stench disappears
and it’s me who blows little puffy clouds
into my daughter’s mouth and lungs.
I pass the sickness on.
Later on we go visit Doctor Nguyen.
As we step inside, I can smell the infected air of the hospital’s hall.
And I know.
I know what the doctor will say.
While I see myself on my daughter’s head
I can hardly breathe.
I am choking with the smell of smoke,
The smell of sadness,
The smell of tears and of cancer.

Waiting with a cup of tea
Wishing these grey clouds would flee
There’s a full cosmos to see
Beyond this vapour veil where all is free

I don't know what it feels like in space.
What the astronauts feel as they float and look out the window
and see a colossal Earth
As they look out the window and see a glimmering light,
an auratic moon and a vast emptiness
It must be pretty
But I doubt it is anything like swinging in the dawn
As I swing, my black and dirty hair is blown back and forth as it kisses the air
With every swing I take I leave behind my melancholies

I've been hearing the birds sing for the past two hours,
and the sun is not yet visible.
If I swing a few more minutes
and the cloudy skies clear,
it'll wake from its daily nap,
from behind my back.
Maybe I can see its reflection through the water in the pool
that sits a few meters from me.

Oh, how the wind is cool.
It blows away those dandelion flower seeds that hit my skin.
When I swing and glide through the wind,
it becomes the closest thing to flying or anything akin.
It does not oppose
Instead, it pushes me higher, closer to the sky
as if I could fly, giving me wings, like the birds that sing.



If I could go to space or wake up early one day,
I would choose to stay.
Here I can swing and kick the air,
hear the birds’ serenade,
and smell the freshness of the moist earth in the air.
This beauty cannot be compared.
I rather swing and observe the forming of this beauty here
Like I do the early Thursday morning .

Breathing in the dead of night
mouth to mouth resuscitation
cloudy plumes so soft and white
drying tears of condensation

Dawning light through misty veil
orange snow and burning sky
rooftop crystals, glass glazed rail
ice is in no short supply

Watching winter close the curtain
to another year come and gone
none the wiser of this I'm certain
like the moon and tide, I've withdrawn

Today in art we were
working on our
sculptures,
the assignment was to
convey or express a
feeling or emotion.
My sculpture turned downwards,
into itself,
and I was busy painting the underside
cloudy shades of grey.
The top, I was planning on
doing bright pink,
with swirls of
oranges and yellows.
I was talking with my friend,
and her sculpture reached up
and then tilted down,
and she was painting a spiral of navy.
We got onto the topic of sadness,
and I told her that I was
sad all the time,
and she said no,
I'm always happy,
always smiling,
never sad.
But just because I'm smiling on the inside,
doesn't mean I'm not screaming on the inside.
That sculpture is me.