To everyone here
Mulan might be just another fictional Disney character
Just a fraction of someone's imagination
To you
She might just be an eighty minute entertainment on your screens
Just a childhood memory
that is slowly
and gradually
fading

But to me
To me she's more than that

You see
Growing up, I didn't have anyone that could teach me things
And I don't mean in sense of school subjects
I didn't have anyone that gave me confident about myself
So I took lessons from everyone and everything

Mulan taught me that I can be a girl and not have pink as my favorite color
Mulan taught me that I can be a girl but not wear and love makeup, dresses and high heels
Mulan taught me that it is okay to love and be good at things that were originally meant for boys
Mulan taught me how I can be comfortable in my skin
Mulan taught me that it is okay to not be a typical girl
and still have my happily ever after fairytale

Mulan taught me that it is okay,
that it is enough to just be
*me

daddy used to call me his little warrior
his little princess
his little mulan

princesses have happy endings
so i will have mine too
right?

mulan finds the love of her life
she saves her homeland
my best friend just fell in love with someone else

i stare at my reflection
showing who i am inside
through my smiling facade
all i see is condensed sadness
i see tears

today we learned about the real mulan
she killed herself

i hold a knife
i am my father's princess
but princesses don't all get happy endings

steel meets flesh
blood meets earth

Grandmother Willow said
listen to your heart, you will understand
but when it pounds all I want to do is run

my heart says so many things
one minute it's telling me to climb a tree as high as the branches let me
the next it says hook line and sinker
and when I'm with someone beautiful, it says
nothing, it just
flutters and pitter patters

Mulan was always my favourite because
she had her heart broken and still
She Saved China
all on her own

my heart breaks like twigs and crumbles like dry
stiff leaves
in Autumn
and my heart is also a rubber ball that bounces from
one place to the next
too rapidly,
I forget where I am
and where I just was a moment before I ended up
wherever I ended up

my heart is like ice and sometimes if you are the right temperature,
it will melt for you
my heart is aware of fallacy and sometimes if you try to coax it,
everything I ever felt for you
won't exist anymore

a few months ago I was sitting at the back of
a midnight bus
in my hometown,
with a hippie headband on, accompanied with braids,
a long dress and moccasins of black suede
when a drunk teenager pointed and hollered directly at my face,
"you look like Pocahontas, how many John Smiths love you?"

I don't get angry anymore
I just get tired
my heart goes to sleep for days and wakes up at
the sudden gong of recognition
in eye contact
that lasts longer than just a few seconds;
my heart awakens at sunsets,
when I am sitting in a tree alone
and it awakens each time I successfully skip a stone

I've always thought highly of the two
disney cartoons
and it's not just because they can fire a harpoon
it's something like embodying the female
self-assurance,
strength of the soul,
embracing solitude like wind on a stroll
heart strong from a softening,
heart loved from singing just for singing
heart open like eye contact
that lasts longer than
just a few seconds