Come, as the night is not here for long,
and I shall vanish in the morning,
shall forget all with the parting of my eyelids.

I will stay with you for as long as you still remember me.
And in your mind, this all makes perfect sense
no matter how twisted it appears.

Love surpasses all imperfections
including your gullible logic.

We should go
deep into the forest and sea
of unreal colors,
where you and I would be together forever
until the sun comes up.

Words
help us define
the way sea turns into sky
the way left becomes right
the way day rises from night.

Words
pin us down to this earth.
Otherwise we would have left.
I would have followed your footsteps
walking toward infinity.

You and I,
we live in words
we dance through words
we make love with words
we are words.

Words
the invention of the lonely
the ultimate intimacy
the bridge between you and me
the child between you and me.

Together,
we create words
we refine words
we play with words
we become words.

And so Our Love
is eternal
behind these words.

what are these creatures of the night
that keep invading my dreams,
poking my ribs and neck,
throwing me back to our dark times,
of when we dyed our eyes
with memories of death?

you brought me a masterpiece,
then took it away from me.
how did I survive my resentment,
rage, and hopelessness?
how did I survive the loss
of your perfection?

we forgot, we forgot to change
the sadness at that moment -
the night when you saw me
purple and gray and empty
and I saw you blank like a page,
we lost each other in a heartbeat.

and we lost our masterpiece.
it could have outgrown us,
could have flown beyond our flesh,
and would have nothing to do with us.
it could have been on its faraway path
and, perhaps, would even be happy.

Original Version

I cannot stop
wondering what this is,
what it means,
where it might take us.

You said,
"Love the question, accept the answer.
The only truth is the lesson,
and the lesson is there is no truth.
You have to come to accept ambiguity
rather than expect definiteness."

To own you is to never have you.
To have you is to never own you.
I have to learn how to let go.
Freedom in love is so ******* hard.

I am thirsty for possession,
I want to keep you away from this world,
I want to eat up each of your words,
leaving your novels incomplete,
unknown to the public's hungry eyes.
But I cannot.

For one day the world will expose you,
the chaos of fame will seep into your skin,
the others' eery obsession will surround your head,
and I will fade.
It is with you
that I do not have a name.

From others I can get everything
but the one thing
that only you have.

And so I have come to accept
and to look forward to
a lifetime of ambiguity
with you.




The Translation*

*******.
You ****** with my head, with my heart.
You know that you can just let me go and do whatever the **** I want,
because I will always come back.
I ******* hate what you have done to me, what I have done to myself
I have fallen so ******* deep in this **** with you.
My god I ******* love you, I am so ******* in love with you,
I love you so ******* much it ******* hurts.
But seriously, don't stop.
Be with me, take away my name,
consume me all.

When you leave me, take all you want,
but leave me three things:
my love,
my poetry,
and my best memories of what you used to be.

The sky and the trees
saw the way you looked at me
and the way I looked at you.
They told me I should
let you go.

For love is not forever.
Yet we promised we would never
forget how we were,
and we would always stay
this way, to each other.

You have not changed; neither have I.
Just that in love I get so blind,
I did not see you in the full light,
but something did not feel right.
Only now do I know why.

When you leave me, take all you want,
but leave me love,
rhythm, rhymes, and words,
and all the memories
that would always make me feel for you this way.

when I woke up this morning,
you would have been half way there on the train
away from this
away from me.

you would have been writing,
thinking, contemplating, arguing.
pages would be filled up,
like your heart, and I
would keep wondering
what you wrote.*

I have nothing to hold on to
but your words, and letters
you sent me. I read them,
had every word memorized,
learned the rhythm and tone,
so I could hear your voice.

I find the deepest pain and the brightest joy
in your creations.
I long to know what you see with your eyes,
how you think with your mind,
how you make love with your body,
how you live in the world with your ego.

I would have left my world for ours,
in a heartbeat. I recognized you
the first time we met. Why can't we
run after our desires, live a life
we truly like, have our dreams
completely realized?

Why can't we become
whom we truly are?
You are what I want,
I am what you want,
why in the world
can't we be together?

I want to fall in love, stay in love, die in love,
to have you here right by me,
to feel you from inside me.
And that smile on your face
and this smile on mine
will forever shine.

we walked toward the beginning of the sea, hand in hand,
you told me this was where you always took her to,
and she always fell in love with the sunset.

I dipped my toes into the cold water. It tingled like salt
on the tip of my tongue. I pressed my feet down and the sea monster
took a firm grip around my ankle. My laughter
filled the air, and your sugary scent from behind me
floated down my throat. Your lips
frantically searched for mine, my arm
pulled down your head, and we
kissed, and we kissed.
I kept
calling your name, and you mine,
and we lost balance and fell down on the
tide. For a moment, I thought
the ocean
could have taken us away
on a free ride.
Wouldn't that be good?

But you were laughing, lifting me up,
walking me back to the sand
with your endless kisses, and your arms
around my waist. We lay down together,
smiled constantly, whispered silly things,
then again we locked lips as the waves sang louder,
chasing seagulls away, so they would not bother us.
Under the light wind and the sun we made love
right by the sea, and under the sky so blue.
You sank deeper into me before
rising back, and I rose higher above you
before sinking in, in perfect harmony,
like those waves luring in the sea.

And I asked us to leave
right before sunset
though I always wanted to see it.

You were smiling as we drove away,
I was looking out the window,
and suddenly tasting salty water
falling down on my lips.

When she comes back, I will tell her
not to leave us again, ever.
Life is already short,
why would she try to cut it shorter?

There are music, the arts, nature
film, wine, festivals, and lovers
and places she have not yet known,
and would never if life were over.

So delicate in the tomb of darkness,
she tried to break through but felt so hopeless.
Don't we all? But eventually,
she would find it.

She would find yourself within God,
much more so than God within her.
For I belong to Him as well
we will always be together.

When I think of you, the world
leaves me, and I see us
at the end of the realm of loss,
embracing the closeness of each other.

My skin behind yours everywhere
we touch,
and I never want this as much
as when I am with you.

Only when I am with you
do I want to keep my eyes open,
sometimes, just a little bit,
so I could take you in deeper
with the sight of your
beautiful face, the feel of your
wonderful body, the sounds
of your whispers, moans and laughter.
What I need
is more than us, more than everything
we have ever told each other,
for I miss you, no matter what
I always come back to you, and
with you I know, it will
always feel so right.
I could hardly hide
my admiration, my needs, my wants,
my desires; and I could hardly wait
until we both
explode
and vanish
into this universe.

Imagine a world without women
humanity turned into manity.

At first, life would be simple, peaceful and easy.
But eventually, temptation would be too great.

Eddie would succumb and
bite the apple.

Left to their own devices,
Adam and Eddie would put up with each other, for a while.

But it would be impossible for both to play sports, smoke, and get wasted
all of the time.

With no one to blame for leaving the fridge's door ajar,
battle would not carry far.

A war of fists would ensue,
with brief mumbles to loud yells and huge amount of profanity.

I can’t trust you.
You just go and do things as you wish.

There’s only one thing on your mind.
(And it's the same in mine, too.)

They'd spill too much blood,
no tears, though their sleeves look soaked.

And in an attempt to make things well again,
Eddie would be four inches longer and Adam with ***** the size of an elephant.
(Hooray!)

It would work, for a few weeks,
but soon, they’d drift apart and start to just do it themselves.

In time, their uncomfortable silence,
would become deafening.

Lonely, so lonely, Adam and Eddie both.
How did they become like this?

Suddenly, it would strike them -
if only there were only one of them and all the women in the world.

Manity, I'm sure you'll agree,
could only end up with men being more *****.

In our alternative lives,
I probably would have been yours.

We would have blocked the smoke detector,
shared one cigarette after another,
sipped the same glass of luscious red,
with my fingers dancing across your chest,
and your left arm firm under my head.

You would talk to me about your poets,
musicians, photographers, and the others.
I would tell you a name I prefer
and get a good laugh from your grimace.
For you've never liked anyone I love.

We would have gone together to a show,
watching beauty in silent admiration.
Our souls would make love to their utmost
without us even touching each other.
That would be my kind of lovers.

Reality is harsh for the romantic,
but we know better than breaking the rules
for the sake of being rebellious fools.
In our arts we bury the strongest desires,
the only way we can give them life.

Have me already, my alternative self speaks,
for mutual madness is what we seek.
But this life, as close to the end as it is,
has taken you away from me
far too long before we met.

I might have imagined all the things unsaid,
consciously have your words misread.
But this one thing we both know best
is how to hide our fantasized regrets
deep behind our written lines.

Sometimes I wish
this reality could tweak a little
and turn into another.

Like, one in which we could actually fall in love
with each other.

Or better,
where we could be happy forever after.

That would be so nice and sweet.
If only I didn't have to wish.

In those days, at every corner of the city
you could find a coffee shop.

There was never a high-rise building,
everything stood together in an unorganized manner,
for they never mastered the art of urban landscaping.

Street vendors had their own way of singing
their promotion songs. You remembered the tune, the words,
which reminded you of those streets.

The sounds of vehicles and their horns and the winds
never stopped. But in those days, they used to be
purer. Clearer. More innocent, perhaps. Less troubled.

Life never stops being tough,
but it was quite beautiful,
then.

When I grew up
the city was still left with fragments of history.
I had no memory of what had happened before I was born,
yet you felt in the air the gentle sadness, and the subtle beauty
from those French buildings. The architecture
slowly faded away as icons from the war,
becoming part of our modern life.
We had to move on,
and so did everyone who had left.

Those buildings, instead, became icons of my childhood,
of what I remembered about the city.
From my elementary school,
you could see the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica to your left,
the Central Post Office right in front of you.
I was always taken home via the street former known as
the Rue Catinat.

I would never forget the way it felt every afternoon.
I'm going home.

Those places have changed, and so have people,
and so have I.
The day they demolished Givral Cafe,
Xuan Thu Bookstore, Passage Eden,
the whole street block of memories,
was the day many of us lost something so deep in our heart.
History was gone once again.
And soon enough,
we would allow ourselves to forget once again.

I keep reminding myself,
Hey, it's ok to change.
My city does not repond to me.
It just becomes so foreign,
as if it has always belonged to somebody else
but me. And I keep digging
into the dust, the traces, the pictures
to find solace in what I could remember
about my changed lover.

They say, in the end it does not matter,
modern society needs revolutions.
Evolutions. Higher skyscrapers. Highways.
A North-South express railway even (Idea rejected.)
We need to catch up with the rest of the world.

Oh, dear men, I am fine with that. I am an easy fellow
who seldom feels too strongly about anything in particular.
But my heart keeps aching from some changes you guys make.
It outraged the day you took down my corner of memories.
I was in Boston reading the news my friends sent me,
picturing myself sitting at those steps in front of the Opera House
looking at the mass of broken bricks and dust
that was once a nice, little, iconic coffee shop-
Givral.

When my friend talked to me about changes around that block,
she talked in a tone that almost seemed guilty.
She did not know how to break the news to me
without also breaking me apart.
For just a few months before that,
we were walking down **** Khoi Street (the Rue Catinat, if you may),
taking pictures of the Opera House,
Givral Café, the Continental Hotel,
joking of how we acted like tourists.

Try being a tourist in your own city.
It means seeing everything with a fresh set of eyes,
trying to record everything,
trying to grasp the essence of everything
within a short amount of time.
I guarantee you it is fun.
And it will reinvigorate your love,
your understanding, your hope.

I was disappointed with some decisions others made.
Yet, being a city girl,
I was raised to adapt to them.
To learn that there will be thousands of other coffee shops
bookstores
landmarks
so many choices to overwhelm me
to drive me away from the time
when I had so few.

Will it eventually work? I do not know.
But that corner of the street (now demolished),
that corner of memory (now fading),
I was there.
Yes, I was there.

He quickly forgot to hold her hands the way she loved it.
Who remembers those things after having stained the sheets?

The pain keeps turning her like a leaf in the wind
not seeing where it comes from,
or where it will go, for all it knows
is being swirled away in a state of chaos.

Her sense of right and wrong was dislocated,
as she keeps thinking back to how good things feel,
forgetting that one is not supposed to cling onto memories
of sensations. They delude you, make you ignore,
turn you away from seeing
where exactly it hurts.

She resists from calling him to not appear
desperate. Needy. Clingy. Anxious.
He is given more freedom than he needs,
which slightly surprises him.
Perhaps she does not care either.

Their twisted sense of communications
has brought the relationship
to where two people are not meant to be.
It is where the *** is incredulously fantastic,
while the non-*** is incredibly empty.

Dwelling on thoughts about you
is my favorite way of getting lost.

Before we met,
we had been at the same places,
only separately.

I wonder if you ever walked past me,
or I you.
I wonder if we had the same emotion
looking at the sunset burned onto the sky.

Those streets that have seen you and me
must have wondered why we never turned around
and recognize the face
we would see as we have known now.
What took so long for souls like ours
to find one another?
What took so long for my dark brown eyes
to meet those of yours?

To know your hands have touched the same doors,
your feet have walked the same stairs,
your eyes have seen the same places,
your skin has felt the same wind,
is so unbelievably ******.

Our summer is coming to an end.

Days fall short of love's breath, lingering touch,
making it seem ridiculous for me to turn away.
Nights of urban solitude have completely covered us,
why are you still closing your soul?

The vastness of not being able to grasp
how it feels to be you
has driven me so **** mad
like a river losing its way on the path to the ocean.

Why are you so free in this relationship?
Why can't I just let you go?

Not that I could hold you back when you want to leave.
You of freedom, of individualism, of utmost liberty.
The thought of separation after all we've had
turns me into the ghost of myself.

Dear Gentlemen,
May I share with you a secret?
Some of you have already known,
some might overlook it.

No matter what your Lady says,
she loves it when you call her.

Her "If you're busy it's ok" is really not ok.
Your "I'm too busy to call" is definitely not ok.

No matter how busy you are,
you can always make time for your beloved.

A phone call, even with no conversational substance,
makes her believe you two are closer.

A phone call, even just a quick "I just miss you that's all",
strengthens her devotion.

A phone call, every now and then,
lets her known she is on your mind,
reminds her of you,
makes the sense of togetherness shine through.

So, Gentlemen,
no matter how much poetry you have written for her,
how much love you dedicate to her,
how many flower bouquets you send her,
every now and then, do yourself a favor,
put everything else aside (no multitasking!)
to call her on the phone.

If you are married,
call from work.
If you share the same place,
call from outside.
If you meet way too often,
call when you do not.

The more frequent your name appears on her little screen,
in her smart, love-coated mind,
The more grossly exaggerated your time of devotion will be.

Dear Ladies,
sorry that I slipped out our secret.
It just ***** not hearing that special ringtone
(you know, the one only his calls make)
a little more often,
doesn't it?

Agreement to Romance
No contract/ signatures
For the shared love of love,
they were brought together.

Defined by liberty,
he needs some space from her.
One day she crossed the line -
agreement was over.*

Yet she hides it from him,
and very well indeed.
She keeps the way she is
with charming words of wit.

He needs the privacy
she wants the true love's touch
They love the fantasies,
an adrenaline rush.

Behind the door she lives
is the absence of his.
He never stays the night,
sometimes forgets to kiss.

She sometimes wondered why
his scent vanished like dust.
They succumb to romance,
right between love and lust.

He still does not know how
she keeps him in her heart.
For if he did, oh my,
they would break far apart.

Agreement to Romance
we've all been there and lost.
The taste of full freedom
comes with too high a cost.

underground held a slam poetry contest.
they drew me from the crowd,
"wanna be the judge? hold your score cards,
the poets would soon get here."

I was sitting on one of those chairs,
front row, facing the competitors.
oh how young they were, glasses and what not,
distressed jeans, leather boots,
some had strange bracelets and weird tattoos.
and some looked just like me,
eager for a show of the best of arts.

"this is exciting" "no ****. a friend brought me here,
never been to a slam show."
that guy next to me was even more excited than I,
he frantically slipped through his stack of cards, asking me,
"how picky are you? you like poetry? how do you decide on a ten?"
I said, "a ten is one that makes me **** my pants",
to which he shut up.

slam
the performance of the words, the rhythm, the rhymes,
metaphors and the like were dropped like fire,
I tried to catch them but a few I missed.
didn't need to make sense,
for they were so good.
I just sat there and kept drawing my ten's.
I could hear the guy next to me mumbling,
"now that starts to smell real bad."
I gracefully turned to him and said, "thank you."

have you been to a slam poetry contest?
it is like a festival of *******, except
you could only use your mouth, and some
body gestures perhaps. it became good,
when one poet started to create illusions and reality
with a story about one guy waking up constantly
like me, who kept running into the vicious circle
of daily mundanes and forgettable details.
to listen and watch him was to see poetry at its rawest best
posing itself ****.

underground poets, here I came to give you
my stack of ten's. for you have created
such lively, dedicated
recollections of my world.

I did not try to forget you.

At the end of my day,
as I was crashing on my bed,
your voice was resounding in my head,
Don't fall asleep in your work clothes.

The scent of food you made in my kitchen
the aroma of your face, after-shave
the angle your lips formed with a smile
the long fingers tracing down my face
- they were still there,
as if you'd never gone away.

Why are you still thinking about him?
He wasn't worth it
Of course he was, the whole time we spent together.
Lovers know best how long is forever.
Those moments I had with him,
he was worth every one of them.

The streets, the highways, the mountains, the sea
Rain, snow, winds, moon, sunrises, sunsets
We walked, we ran, we drove, we flew through them all.
Until now I cannot get used to the emptiness
of my hands.

The blinds of my window haven't changed,
you said you liked them, for they blocked
glances from those highly unwelcome.
Thus when we made love, they were never up.

They have remained there after you left.
Glances vanished,
and so did the sun.  

And so did my attempt
to forget everything about you.
It does not concern me whether you are here.
To me you are a matter of fact.
To me you are intact.
To me you love me still.

in the swollen summer days, the pressure
of what is coming to an end, the silent chaos
of the surroundings, and
the strange comfort of the new wind
completely took over everything else.
hence the slow details of day-to-day occurrences.

for there seemed to be no transition between day and night,
and light was slowly dipping into darkness,
and darkness was gently unfolding on light.

the intertwined arrays of sunshine on the clouds,
the fading sunset,
the smoke fondling the moon
all happened. all vanished.

when the eyes closed and opened
they anticipated the same thing,
and so they were served.

the aftertaste of a night's vivid creations was sweet
like honey
subtle
like tea
and lasting
like memories that were created to haunt for a lifetime.

what was remembered and
what was forgotten
all blended together.

thus past wounds were healed,
laughs were concealed behind lips,
and time was dissolved into air
to sink them all, to rise them all,
to sew fantasies seamlessly into reality.

and maybe the dream would last,
from the juxtaposition of breath to breath,
into eternity.

He said, "I only knew of one way to love you, and it
was not how you wanted it. What could we do
not to let go of everything we've had?"

And I cried
for not knowing the answer as I
always did. I wanted
no one else but him, I remembered
every second we shared. My eyes
were forever locked in the direction of his.

Events change against our will, taking us
away from where we want to be, what we dream together, and
other secrets between two lovers.

Every moment would play in my mind
over and over like a shameless promotion
of "everything you've ever wanted"
yet when you make the call,
"everything" is now out of stock.

Every night I woke up
to the empty side of my bed,
the empty void in my heart, knowing
they would always belong to him.

If we must move on
how would I even begin
talking laughing kissing loving
the way I did with him in my life?
How would I forgo my habits
that fit perfectly with his?
How would I forget his name
written on my soul and body?

Dear Time,

Please save every moment he has for me.
For I, have been and will be, having him in my moments.

I collect each tick of time we share like a child does his marbles.
Drop them into the drawer of my memories, and occasionally,
they will glisten under the sun. I think of him, so much,
I wonder if you see his smile behind mine, his eyes
reflected on mine, his fingerprints
under the sheer layer of my skin.

He is everywhere I go, at every place I remember.
The way we sat
with my head on his shoulder, his voice
whispering to my ears, "We should go
back to our place." And before the city disappeared into
the night, we'd already gone.

The days of snow, when he asked,
"Want to see this from a different angle?", and we went
up and up against the winds
blowing against us, and the snow
leaving tiny sparkles on my coat, my face.
The only other human presence
was his. My body was trembling as much as
my heart, then we got to the mountaintop,
and the world we knew was gone.

For beauty of nature and the strong bond
between two souls, at that very moment,
devoured us whole,
and we had no choice
but to fall silent and watch
the sun rise, with his hand
on mine.

Cannot fall in love with the poet.
But I am already in love with the poet.

For only the poet knows how to please me
with the rhythm
of words
the sensation
of rhymes
the aesthetics
of images
the purpose
of diction

on the same page
our words are intertwined
  our rhymes are smooth
   our images are blurry
    our diction is precise  

and we end it all with an exclamation
of one last cry.

His eyes are gentle like his poetry
sometimes they are difficult to look.
I am not always the woman he thinks I could be,
wrapped in the sheer sheet of romance,
relishing every love letter - an endless rainfall,
grasping for breath at everything splendid,
and at the end of our poem, always
yearning for more.

I am already in love with the poet, but I
have to go. And for one last time,
in our world of perfection,
together we write.

same words, same tone
every time I see you I see your message I pick up the phone
I wish you would do it right
even just for one time.

but why, you always have to say something show something prove something do something
annoy me disappoint me make me add harshness to my words turn me into someone I do not want to become

why can't you, just once, before it's too late
say something do something be something
before it's too late, help me so I won't forget
why I once thought you were my world

autumn
the wind came by, and I forgot to ask
if it’d seen you.
rain
on the other side of the crowd you ran, your face
became so strange.
late night affairs
shitfaces everywhere, she almost poured her wine on the grass
I saw you getting ***** at her laughters.
people’s assumptions
they look at any couple, and immediately
“they must’ve ****** each other”
the truth of the matter is
you never know
what actually happens
in this life’s show
everything hides beside a mirror
yet all you can see
is your own horror.
But perhaps
I’m about to get over you
before the snow
right before the snow

In a city far far away,
another life is waiting for me.

I hear and speak another language,
see other known faces.

As if I had two hearts inside my chest
As if every return were the first time.

At every place I’ve come and left
it seems nothing has changed
it seems the city has forgotten appearances and absences
it seems I have lived a temporary death

What would I do,
if one day,
there were no other city at another place
for me to arrive at?

When we saw each other, our eyes
were locked, not into each other
but into the memories we shared.


When we were together in a crowd,
nobody knew about us. Just you and me.
Separately.


I was content with our
secret closeness. Yet to a woman,
Love cannot be unsaid.


My greed of belonging
pushed us apart. In a breath, we tore away
our past.


I should be happy with our
silent goodbye. Each night is just
another night. Without expecting you.


Each morning is
beautiful weather. birds singing. everyone smiling.
everything I did not have.


And how painful, the loneliness
of the footsteps with no more rush
to run towards somebody.


If there’s nothing new about thinking of you
what is it
that makes me think of you, not so much,
but for so long?

And Mama said children of strength never cried in front of others, for
tears proved a lack of control. I asked, did you not cry
when you saw me for the first time? She said,
no, I restrained from screaming, and I was
relieved.
With a smile,
perhaps.

Ever since, happiness to me
is the emptying of a stuffed stomach.

Oh, yes, I liked him,
before he saw me under the light,
before his first glance landed on my forehead,
before he extended his right hand, like a gentleman,
introducing his name, where he came from – things I would love to know,
without asking me what my name was.

Oh, yes, I like him,
but why does that matter at all, while his smile
resembling the sky after each rain, his hands
with long fingers and pretty veins, his lips
curved like a cave that draws you in,
are locked into another person’s.

Oh, yes, I like him.
He thinks he knows me, not because of me,
but with his experience. Wisdom.
Empathy. All done with the touch of a glimpse.
I have thought of forgetting him,
yet my feelings for him are not strong enough.

I have fallen in love with you.

Before the end of my day, I try not to think of you, but you always come back.
There were nights when I did not think about you,
but you were always there, sleeping peacefully, somewhere behind the clouds.
Then I would not know how to react
when you came, full moon.

All I could do
was to devour your beauty
knowing that you’ll soon fade away
back into my darkened heart.

Perhaps, this is my chance
to understand you
to make you smile
to trust someone with my entire life
to not feel the danger of being someone’s mistake
Perhaps I just need to love you.

I cannot just love you.
I want you to love me too.
I want you to to feel the unfathomable happiness that I feel when I think of you
I want you to feel the pride that I feel when you amaze me being who you are
I want you to feel the calmness that I feel when you rescue my faith while others have failed me
I want you to feel the life that I feel when I know I am no longer lonely
I want you to feel love and the beautiful things it brings.

I do not want you to feel the pain inflicted on me when you are not close to me
I do not want you to feel the jealousy when someone else has a chance with you
I do not want you to feel the sadness when I realize I might never reach the moon
I do not want you to feel the fear of losing whom you want the most someday
I do not want you to feel the other side of love
it feels like the sky of those nights without you:
dark, empty, ready to fall.

But my dear, if you cannot feel the same for me,
I do not want you to love me.
I want you to find the one for you, and you both can go through something like this together, for the rest of your life.
And every time I look into the sky, no matter how it gets, I will always remember you.
So beautiful, discreet, full of hope, my only full moon.

I can only be so grateful for the new life I have
after knowing you
after knowing I have fallen in love with you
and never want to get out of it.

Are you confused when I talk to her in our language, yet
it is completely out of context, you just laugh it off because you
have no idea?

Are you confused when I do not look into your eyes, let out
a weary, wicked smile; and you think I just daydream, but
the night is already here?

Are you confused when your phone keeps ringing as if
somebody has been frustrated to hear your voice even
just for one minute, yet I just leave you there?

Are you confused when the things I used to do
for you are slowly disappearing, and your passionate questions
just hang unanswered in the air?

Are you confused when the apartment looks exactly
the same, clean and a little neater perhaps, but you can no longer
smell the aroma of my hair?

Are you confused when they ask you why we broke up,
why someone like me would leave someone like you,
and you really do not know what to share?

My dear, I was even more confused than that. I was
not myself with you any more, but when I really saw
you – I made up my mind and could not be late
for another minute.

during nights like tonight I cannot stay at my place, must find an excuse to go out.
    little sister wrote about her headache. hated this time of the day. felt like she wanted to die.
    I have that feeling too. around four to six p.m. these days, the night comes quickly.
    one friend said, ‘do not come to my city these days, the grieving sadness of the sky makes people depressed.
    I wanted to say, ‘would your city be more melancholic than mine?’
    I always pick up my walking steps, sometimes slightly scared of the people around.
    the glances colored grey, oppressed, like the reality between them and me. the distance between us.
    our hearts do not seem to bear any resemblance.
    I am loyal to someone, devote my admiration to only him, do not want to look at anybody else, do not want to think of anyone else.
    yet do not love him.
    do not feel comfortable unfolding my heart to him. do not really trust him.
    since my first breath, I cannot fully trust others, perhaps as much as ninety-nine percent.
    due to the remaining one percent, never have I ever been able to love a person.
    the first glimpse of love already comes with the guilt of betrayal.
    because of one percent.
    I meet a friend, laugh, talk, and have dinner.
    before ordering food I already imagine its flavor in my mouth.
    suddenly just want to close my eyes
    forget about all of this.
    perhaps, after six p.m.,
    when darkness emerges,
    I will be slightly more cheerful.
    collect some happiness, some hope,
    no need for anything extravagant,
    bringing me from one moment to the next safely.
    because of a little of the unnamed things,
    because of one percent that has not been given,
    I have many times saved myself from
    the wheels that move so fast.
    the every day that passes by so fast.
    only my despair,
    so slow