Today and yesterdays
after the sunset afterglow departs
the sky darkens,
so does the sky of the mind
Too often I fear the night:
the thoughts, protesting in my headspace,
sneak up
tarry around
traverse between intensity and intensity
and almost **** me.
A trivial worry could be the sharpest blade,
now I see.
Daytime controls my concentration, a shield, a disguise,
now I question.
"Hope you're not losing sleep about what's next."
but lyrics are just lyrics
but losing sleep is just confronting concerns—
some haunted, some marooned.
May 12
May 12, 2026 at 12:48 PM UTC
The almost-transparent azure
looked south to
the almost-full moon descending
from Hukun Mount peak. Morning sun ascending.
Up the hill we walked.
None of the tombstones' alone;
each has a young pine by its side, evergreen.
A grounded hush
shook every whisper, noise, and thought.
Kneeing, I’m transfixed
by something I couldn’t name, yet I could feel
the six lit incenses in my hands
were lifting our spirit up until it reached the sky.
Speciousness.
Grandfather, in that blue grace you reside.
We pressed our hands and prayed in silence
while grandmother murmured her chant.
I sensed
a thread of grief,
a recurrent of wish.
Whom is the prayer for?
Besides connection to the dead,
isn’t it also—if not more—about consolation
for the living?
Sparkling flames.
Mourning faces.
Smoke rose in wind while
embers refused to remember
the weight of fire
before I could unlearn
the weight of kinship.
The heated air
distorting a contour,
disorienting a hand.
I looked away.
When the ritual suddenly terminated,
my body left with the crowd but
my mind tarried in the graveyard.
For sentience may stay or fade in just another trance,
I drowned in the unheard dirge—
None of the tombstones' alone;
each has a young pine by its side, evergreen.
Evergreen.
Apr 5
Apr 5, 2026 at 12:20 PM UTC
Bag, jacket, shoes all in the locker,
I put down everything
without questioning what's left
for nothing's missing.
In the pool I see
and is seen differently
like nobody, like anybody.
I'm protected by swim cap and goggles
as much as I'm exposed by them,
a precise, precious exposure:
Exhalation becomes the only engine,
a steady yet intense rhythm
that takes my arms, legs, lung,
and heart all to follow.
My ears muffled
but never refuse saturation
as a hideaway, and
that’s how I learn the timbre of water.
My gravity dissipates
from one flash to another
for I don't try to tame the waves
but to understand its density.
Swimmers become familiar strangers
who speak without words, oxygen-free.
a pause of stretch
a look of respect
a gesture of openness
a tint of grace
That’s our language.
Every time I raise my head
it feels like invading the air—
not returning to.
In less than a second,
I’m back in the water,
turning inundation into affection
Water does not create;
it emancipates,
freeing my body from the mind
and its worries, this time.
An uncertainty under water
stays and satirizes the familiar ground
mistaken as security.
So I deny turbulence in known relations.
So I plunge under, deeper, and farther,
So I won't suffocate.
Mar 13
Mar 13, 2026 at 11:33 AM UTC
“They are not following us.”
We veered.
Took turns to lead. Slowed down at unique buildings. Felt safe to express, recall, or forget. Between the three close friends that was casual, natural, and almost magical. When HY, JR, and I cycled through the alleys in early-March-afternoon sunshine, a gusto in simple stillness surrounded as something we couldn’t ask for. “You feel the breeze?”
Upon joining the rest of our friends who instead went down the main streets, CL came up to ask me whether I was riding my own bike and suggested rechecking the lock. I felt cared, if not belonged. Although the air did freeze in apparent awkwardness, I laughed it off, for we’ll all be gone before long. After goodbyes, my solitude fell adrift through unfamiliar neighborhoods in and of a city that I call home.
You feel the breeze? It’s got some hold on me: not the routes nor the places, but being us on our sideway.
Mar 9
Mar 9, 2026 at 1:41 PM UTC
Maybe I am guilty for the leftover
essays, checklists, and goodbyes.
Thence I flipped through the calendar
a commemoration from the future.
Crazy, cloudy college application season
finally cracked an end, but
my spring of composition was stolen,
though I know—or believe—that it is not broken.
My Spring.
Drowsiness suffocates a poet
so I become addicted
to enough caffeine and more-than-enough sleep,
unsaid prayers that buoy me.
By the afternoon windowsill I had the last sip, iced,
all the profound meanings disappear from my life.
Jan 12
Jan 12, 2026 at 10:34 AM UTC
"This place had a heartbeat in its day."
For some reasons i can't explain, a brutal way to ameliorate anxiety is positioning myself into another duty. Embodied by mobility, airport evokes thinking as much as hearkening — the highest stage of listening: only to listen. It grows as a form of sensory participation of a field without attaching any meaning to sounds and therefore allows the subject and object of this acoustic event to entangle. Those who can and do hearken hold an intensity that keeps them sensitive to the environment they entered and altered. Am i among them? At least i could let sounds penetrate through the body; it cures and splits all at once, incorporating debris of imagination, action, and aspiration.
Sounds do not disappear, only dissipate; so do voices. The line between volition and ideal no longer equivocal; I’m taking a chance, a fall, a shot. In dreams I hardly dream a figure who hasn't yet show up — perhaps becoming. And yet amorphous, heavy worries kept me awake. Again, i flowed with them — into billows that would otherwise engulf hope. What those worries eclipsed was memory, an anchor of sentience that fears going on fire. Experiences dissipate, lowing the volume, silent, but sometimes, it haunts anyway, earsplitting.
Later this Fall i’m getting to know every route in this county and tell thee where not to speed. As i split the road down the middle, gusty wind invades the turmoil, ever torn. I almost froze. In seconds the world seems so simple. Perturbation surrounds, and i don't know that i can take another fight. A timid grim, drowsiness incriminates me escaping into unmade blanket and unmatched timezone. Not having to make sense is such a luxury. And I really love the sense of unsettlement writing brings me; it exposes something I didn’t know I know. 5: 43 pm December 5, 2025. Islands District. 22 Celsius. 56% humidity. Right off the port. It feels more foggy than my August arrival but the exact moisture permeates. I still hold the thrill, you know? “Having no regrets is all that i really want.”
AWE Zone A. A2, 379. The distance of a few seats took me 364 days.
It is in the most unlikely situation that I understand the dynamics between me and the uncontrollable. Then the message it carries is: suppressing expectations on others might help but the expedient decision made by the self refuses any Plan B. And I won’t fan the heat into flames. Gigantic windows, sparsely populated seat, Nodi ***** and my RD Batch#1 DRAFT7.5. No one is wrong; 'tis the last substratum of lived experience. By the way, I skipped meal again, defying Prof.Maxine’s note but not another: stay hydrated.
The plane was taking off. Overweight and weightlessness, all-consuming.
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025 at 5:18 AM UTC
Air in my lungs 'til the road begins
As the last of the bugs leave their homes again
And I'm splittin' the road down the middle
For a minute, the world seemed so simple
Feel the rush of my blood, I'm seventeen again
I am not scared of death, I've got dreams again
It's just me and the curve of the valley
And there is meanin' on earth, I am happy
Passed Alger Brook Road, I'm over the bridge
A minute from home, but I feel so far from it
The death of my dog, the stretch of my skin
It's all washin' over me, I am angry again
The things that I lost here, the people I knew
They got me surrounded for a mile or two
The car's in reverse, I'm grippin' the wheel
I'm back between villages, and everything's still
Nov 12, 2025
Nov 12, 2025 at 6:20 AM UTC
midnight talks, tacit alignment, borrowed vocabulary
It's such a privilege to have common ground
Some things are never meant to last
Now I see it when i'm looking back
“Oh I feel you.” He said. Or maybe I said.
that's all i can say about it.
Oct 18, 2025
Oct 18, 2025 at 7:04 AM UTC
to hear someone say:
I'm fine
but look behind
my eyes,
memories rewind.
I don't know
how I will miss this autumn
until I looked back and saw
my shadow extended.
You said, "The mountain is you."
Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 8:24 AM UTC
Interconnectedness
arrives
as a terrible greatness
yet departs the same way.
Some things are
never meant to last,
so i'm holding on
to the memos we had.
Sep 30, 2025
Sep 30, 2025 at 12:46 PM UTC