I don’t know how to not be an actress.
I have no idea how to be real
What is it I really am any time feeling
And what is it that I truly want to do.
I need to tear down the theatre curtains
And stand without costumes on life’s stage

What can I use to take off the makeup
That turns me into who I am not
That covers up the scared little girl
Trying so hard to figure it out
Aching to know what the real villain is
And finding a way to subdue it.

Sensing the final act has begun
And my script is missing those pages,
I vainly search back stage for a prompter
Or someone who knows if I exit stage left
And what the script says is my final line
And if Curtain Call has now been cancelled.
                    ljm

It’s Thursday morning, usually no one’s favorite, but this one seems sugary new, as if beamed in from a different, better universe. The clouds look fluffy and freshly washed.

Even the freshmen, who’re everywhere, multiplied, as if they’d been cloned overnight, seem less dramatic with their endless droning-on about insignificant political points.

Could this explosive sunniness be because midterms were stupidly easy and spring break is one day away? Hmm, maybe, but it’s not the whole story. Peter (my bf) will be here tomorrow night and for 18 romantic days (and nights) we’re going nowhere except New Haven night spots and my dorm room. I’m so happy, in a pure pop euphoria way, I almost feel guilty about it.

It’s 45°, the high will be 52°. New Haven’s warming up, I think we have winter on the run, next stop:spring, baby. Sunny, Lisa, Leong and I are breakfasting together before we scatter, like Confetti, for our day.

We’d picked a table by the windows, because it looked relatively clean. We dumped our stuff and began raiding the breakfast bar. All of the choices look depressingly healthy—does anyone else miss grease for breakfast—you know, bacon? Anyone? Oh, well, at least there’s ‘specialty coffee’.

After we’d all settled in, we were quiet. Most were visualizing their day, I supposed. I wasn’t. I was thinking about last night. Last night, Leong was making Chinese soup—she’s a gourmand—and teaching us how to make it. It’s elaborate, and as she worked she married the instructions with details from her life growing up in China.

Like how, back in Macau, they lived in this great house with many servants (her dad is an industrialist) but her grandmother insisted on raising chickens and growing a garden—and somewhere in the mix she added, with heart-on-her-sleeve vulnerability, “My dad doesn’t know how to show his love.”

And we were like, “Oh, wow, Ok, that got real - quickly.” It seemed sudden and off-kilter, at first, but as we talked it out, I decided that there was something kind of poetic about using food to talk about the emotional barriers you’re facing with your Chinese father.

“I need some high energy, smashing,” Sunny confided, after her first few sips of coffee.
“It’s 8:23am,” Leong moaned, closing her eyes as if to say, “It’s too early to start.”
“Who says femininity is shy and retiring?” Lisa asked, rhetorically.
I made a face. The pastry I’d gotten was stale. I dropped it, but I didn’t spit out my first bite. “It’s the non-stop of disappointing little things that **** our joy,” I stated sagely, around the stale mush.
“Epicureanism?” Sunny asked no one in particular. But no one entered the debate.
.
.
Songs for this:
You Can Have It All by Yo La Tengo
Cry! by Caroline Rose

Summer began soft—
honeymilk pooled through mango leaves,
pigeons feather-heavy on telephone wires—
the whole world gold—
still ripening—
like something that didn't know how to end.

I remember the river—
thin-*****, sun-fed—
wearing the sky like a borrowed veil—
bruised lavender by dusk,
silver-stitched by midnight.

We were half-salted, half-feral—
knees green-stained,
pockets lined with papaya seeds,
believing if we never named the days
they could never leave us.

Evenings folded in hibiscus hush
mothers calling from verandahs
their voices trailing jasmine heat
but we stayed
bloom-fed—
learning how silence could taste like belonging.

There was a boy
wild-haired, sugar-grinned
who carved his name into the gulmohar—
said it was the only way
to outlive summer.

I never carved mine.
I wanted to belong to something
without leaving a scar.

The river kept what we couldn't—
pocket marbles clouded with spit,
cicada shells,
prayers hushed into cupped palms—
half-wishing, half-forgetting.

When the rains came—
soft at first—
then harder—
we waded knee-deep through the swell,
our laughter thin as dragonfly wings—
something breaking beneath it.

But rivers don't keep secrets.
They carry them.

By August—
the gulmohar stood stripped—
his name unstitched—
washed down to sea.

By September—
the river forgot itself—
spitting up broken dolls,
rusted bicycle chains—
whole summers gutted in the mud.

By October—
we learned
the world is only ever borrowed.

I wonder if the boy remembers
if his name still flickers beneath the water
stitched somewhere too deep to touch.

I never carved mine—
but if you pressed your ear to the current
if you listened long enough—
I swear you'd still hear me,
a salt-thin breath
folded beneath the hush.

heart of sadness
follows the eyes
of madness
into the scream of night.

who dares to dream
in a starless night?

war and peace then war and love

and all nightmares are real
staring into

a starless night,

and all we have
are the flames
stolen from a screaming night,
and all we have are each other.

In this ceaseless, surprising journey,
it seems unthinkable
that you could ever flicker out.

You drift through thoughts,
piercing the event horizon,
touching the impossible,
deflecting off the wall.

You turn back along cosmic paths,
your photons comprehend
the nature of who we are—
a sum of chance and fate,
woven into living threads,
floating endlessly
in the tender night.

home is a cage
slide out the window
find a different way
run with the wolves
chase the child

it won't always be like this
ceramic heart
cosmic bruise
lovesick in a hotel wildfire

chemistry begins with
orbiting the moon
he calls her a river

swallowing down mistakes
she cares a little less about everything now

blood on the mattress
young blood

breaks in the sun
mean pure dark is yet to come
--nightly things

as long as she gets by
despite the crushing weight of gravity
she will take swan feathers
and wedding days to bed

but never take the blame