Letter From an Old Poet

 I

Day two thousand 

one hundred and ninety-one.

Our little blue marble

has made one modest revolution 

around our honey-sweet sun 

since this 900-square-foot home

fell into our eager laps.

The walls have learned us

the way our abandoned stadium once did,

though we are forbidden to mark them.

They’ve basked in the scent

of butter popcorn on nights we devote 

to serial killers and sitcoms.

II

The floors know our heavy tread,

have grown attached to our cat mats. 

The marred glass coffee table 

with the sweeping legs 

(you hate so much)

has seen every cozy kimchi stew,

food delivery and late-night nosh.

The creaky blackhole of a couch —

now the dominion of a surrendering

palms up patchwork cat — 

has a gravity all its own. 

Beyond the event horizon is where

it stores our awakeness. 

My insomnia is inscribed into the cushions. 

III

It’s our iron anniversary 

and it never ceases to marvel me 

how conversations unravel between us

like a runaway roll of toilet paper —

with dramatic gusto 

and a blind stubbornness to keep on going. 

Your spark of intelligence and idiosyncrasies,

my curious creativity make our table tennis wit. 

Each flying orange ball is a new pun

brought to the table.

IV

This year saw our vow renewal to fantasy, 

to chance on a 20-sided die,

that we may live a thousand lives

as children of gods, meaty warriors,

cursed charlatans, and conduits of creation

before we lay our corporeal selves to rest

only to exhume our corpses for the coming workday. 

My artistic prowess is a self-effacing 

candle flame in your cupped palms.

Pride swells in me like a tidal wave

each time you breathe in my handpicked words. 

V

We are six years in 

and your touch has only grown more tender. 

I fit into your arms’ encirclement 

like they evolved to meet my mould. 

Six years ago I decided it would be you,

and we grew into each other with entangling roots. 

We crest the hilltop of our twenties, 

slide into the lates of them, 

shedding old skin cells of our youth, 

finding refuge in wine and song,

and still meeting for the first time

in every conjured newborn world.

900 Square Feet

I.
Day one thousand
eight hundred
and twenty-six.

At the end of Memory Cul-de-sac,
sits the once abandoned stadium —
with the black rose scent,
cold coffee, and bleached skittles.
We seldom visit this place,
though it remains haloed
several times over on our yellowing map.
I do find myself here now,
tracing the bolt etches of jagged handwriting.

I shuffle past unswept confetti piles
and crumpled band flyers that say
this place still thrives
on a new lease of life.


II. 
We signed a lease ten paces from the summit
of our rosewood anniversary.
I see it in the distance as I close
the heavy metal doors of the stadium
and check for stray remembrances
on the choppy sidewalk.

It sits like a glorified treehouse,
a habitable monument,
a testament of capitalism,
a towering castle.

We, the indoorsy explorers,
couch-surfing hitchhikers
have found nine hundred square feet
to put our names on.


III. 
Seven hundred days before,
we only knew of yearning,
nostalgic for a red ribbon finish line,
so we could finally —
finally stop running.

Run toward the same beacon,
instead of exerting every ounce of strength
running toward each other.

Forty-two days I am still reeling,
still clutching that weathered red ribbon
in my cracked palms and wondering
how the universe favored us enough
to lead us straight home
on our first trek into the concrete wilderness.


IV. 
Home looks a lot like diamond dust
that settles atop IKEA shelves.
It is the sound of motorcycle flatulence
in the dead of night like a cityscape lullaby.
It is the scent of steaming jasmine white rice,
cat-shaped rugs, a malfunctioning refrigerator light.

I think we have already begun
to vacuum-clean the dust without having
seen it shimmer in the sunlight and settle like snow,
already begun reaching into the hourglass
to keep the sands of time from falling so fast.


V.
Through these five years of falling,
of flying, of unencumbered free fall,
of the insidious fine, each falter, fail and fight,
you forget how small you started.

From a seed that fit snugly
in the palm of my hand,
you buried yourself, and grew roots,
grew branches that stretched every which way
despite not knowing what it is
you're trying to hold.

And I stand in your shade,
smiling with pride,
tipping a watering can over the parts of you
that I sometimes forget the rain
can't get past your branches to touch.
I have never been a green thumb,
but I hope it’s enough.

Four out of Forever

I. 
Day one thousand,
four hundred
and sixty one.  

That abandoned stadium 
with the black rose perfume
wafting from the baseboards   
is a distant red pin 
on our creased, coffee-stained map. 

The years have been kind to us — mostly.
We have tightroped on telephone wires 
during the dark days, and fluorescent nights
when distance was not the only plague.
And once out of the allegorical cave,
I was reassured that you, 
my tall and lanky shadow cast by firelight
were not merely that. 

II. 
The shadow was not you, 
but it was yours. 
Tethered to you by the boot heel 
in the days of our bereavement. 
When you returned, ash at your feet, 
to reclaim it, it was like meeting you for the first time. 
Along with the gentle hum of your voice,
was the valley of your chest, 
on which I lay to gaze upon my starless ceiling. 

Your once immaterial hand was now secured mine 
and like the beginning, I fell asleep
to the whooshing of wind 
through the caverns of your lungs.  
And like an explorer, 
I discovered anew, the deep rumble of your voice,
the rippling aftershocks of your earthquake laughter,
your touch — softer than silk but as sure as a surgeon’s. 

III.
This year, we are twice as grateful 
yet, twice as existential
as we strap more age to our backs. 
We sometimes forget what youth tastes like,
though it still lies like an almost melted candy
at the back of our tongues.

We are house-hunting nomads,
with the hearts of gypsies.    
We sit in token candlelight,
drinking Tuscan wine and eating Camembert 
atop salted crackers and charcuterie.   
We exhume our old skeletons and talk of them, 
over the clinking of monogrammed cutlery.  

IV.
Now, I sink to sleep
and awake to find you’ve surfaced with me. 
We chase the hours and I, ever the stenographer,
have our every moment at my fingertips. 
I believe our cave days are over;
the world is bright and blinding
and if we take it together,
it might not be the Everest we think 
is beyond us.    

V.
I choose you like the sea chooses the captain,
like the moons choose their planet. 
Natural. Unforced but intended. 
As everyone begins to drift apart, 
overcoming their tidal forces,
and bowing to the Big Bang,
we hold fast in mutual gravity. 

Two hundred and eight weeks.

Two million, one hundred and three thousand

eight hundred and forty minutes. 
Four years 
and forever to go.  

Twelve, Four, Twenty

Day one thousand and ninety six.

I
It is day eleven and our blinding stadium lights
have been shut off, the scent of black rose
drowned out by the petrichor,
as the rain weathers the paint,
our little up-and-comer
does a three-sixty and becomes abandoned again.

II
It is day thirty-six
and my skin is forgetting your touch.
Two thousand five hundred and twenty billion
cells of mine have died and been replaced
and I worry soon this body
will not have known you. 

III
This year, I stand by the window,
a cigarette dangling lazily from my fingertips,
fingers-crossed my smoke turns signals
and the suburban breeze wafts into your home,
carrying my heavy sighs
that here only fall on deaf ears. 

This year, you pluck guitar strings
instead of brushing tears off my cheek.
The notes you sing come through the wire,
and for a moment, I forget the one I am walking on.

IV
Three thousand is why the trains won't run,
four thousand is why our cars won't start.
It is the modern dystopia building barriers
of brick numbers and cemented chance,
of chaos in the capital, of household prisons,
and all we have in common:
the rolling numbers, the music, and the stars. 

I still wake to see your face
translated into ones and zeroes.
It is a mere mirage of you
but my desert desiccated heart
believes itself to be beating beside yours,
next to you and
two hundred and twenty-five kilometres apart.

V
Time does not seem to have any bearing on you.
As they slander, abuse... forget me,
my pain shatters me, speaks in saltwater streams,
I am all empty shell and shattered stained glass memories.
You have been there to pick up every last piece,
grazing your fingertips as you dust gold between the cracks,
as if to say after this golden repair,
my beauty is twofold.

Take me with you on your wandering days,
even those you walk with your shoulders hunched,
head hung as you hold a map that has no markings,
as a million voices in your head
screaming which direction to take.

We have a home, you and I. 
It is not here, it is not now.
It will smell of spring and aged books,
down the line perhaps several thousand more days.
where my heart will lie down next to yours
and never have to move again.   

Ten Years of Age

The girl with her viridescent fingerprints
through her first act of life,
whose ground she has paced for a decade,
traces her fingertips on the teal fences,
that come away flaking auburn powder.


Her black school shoes
with chalk-white prints
gently graze the crewcut lawn.


Her checkered dress swings in the wind,
seeds of weeping love-grass
catching on the cotton hem.


The mid-week midsummer wind
blows a thousand needle pricks
on her molten milk chocolate eyes.


She plucks a stalk
and with the same fingertips grazed from the rusted fence,
ties a knot around the iron,
tethering her plucked, withering sanity
on the fence that owned her youth.

All By Heart

I 

The first utterance

whispered with the scent of

black rose mingled with lavender lingering in the wind,

seven hundred and thirty days forward 

and even road signs do not know 

of all the towns we have been to.

II

Last July slashed a gash 

that strapped years to me.

These trembling fingers 

that try too often to count 

the ticks of time I can’t take back,

and the saltwater that trickles down

these circles of twilight eyes 

and the violent velvet tempest tremors 

that take the voice from my throat

and leaves my chest a vacant vacuum of ember haloed gravity. 

You know them all by heart.

I read an almanac of secrets all mine in your watchful eyes. 

III

This springtime, our old stadium 

with the bolt scratches on the bleachers 

reopens for its last hurrah,

the lights brilliant like their lumens were of stolen starlight 

and we are somehow standing burnt out but star-bright,

our hands cinnamon dusted from building towers. 

You were alight with an ardent zeal,

as the songs slipped from your lips

all recalled and awaiting the strains,

you sauntered across the stage 

like it was yours to begin with. 

IV

I have been ghosting, 

been slipping in and out of daytime comatose, 

confused my soul with pineapple smoke,

pirouetting in a fog of fragmented panic and poison envy.

But each night I try drifting down to

our post-code and pretend the sun rises 

only when I want it to —

and when the illusion splinters 

the storms roam again like wild, absconding animals 

and I have yet to outrun the slithering snakes in the rising water. 

V

Still you have been the stronghold,

the anchor arms that reach meters deep,

into trenches alongside all my once-was’s 

that still prick in spite of time. 

You have built bomb shelters from

bricks of patient promises,

sanctioned in the reigning monarchy

of a soft disapproving polar bear.

In our den, I salvage enough peace 

for slumber enclosed in a hold

that will not halt winter 

but may unfreeze scarlet rivers

just long enough to relearn 

a little forgetting 

and the simple act of breathing.  

We Were Here

I
I remember it began like this:

Fifty two weeks,
three hundred and sixty five days ago,
a hollow stadium haunted with our silhouettes,
the night air saturated —
with the awakening aroma of coffee and dusty anecdotes.
Tonight's deep breath
is everything it was back in that nameless paper town.
Except it's a sweet nectar, red rose kind of night
and the fog is just a mist amidst mountaintops.
I wrote so many poems for you
in a language I still struggle to transcribe,
a language of silence and Earth spinning
and time passing and stars burning.

II
In springtime we sprouted
where we thought nothing could grow.
Here, in all the ways I told you I loved you
you heard it the loudest when I said nothing.

How after that whole stretch
of quiet foreheads pressed together 4am silence,
I whispered “I love you”
in parallel to all the stardust spilling out of my skin
and you said “I know.”
And after a beat you said, “I love you too.”
The summer sun strengthened our intertwined roots,
colored the blossoms, greened the leaves.
All the intoxicated conversations
and surprise golden hour adventures.

II
Autumn started beautiful... as it does.
The reds and violets, the tangerines and yellows.
October's tragedies were like falling leaves
and rotting roots.
Their aftermaths paved the path for winter's unrelenting hand.
And winter did come.
But somehow, insides not exactly optimal,
we stood, let the leaves fall where they had
and as fate had it...nothing took everything.

Folklore spilled from our lips
in nights that became morning
but there was truth in all the fantasy.
And I'd like to think the sky still smiles down on us now,
whispering an I told you so to the sea at horizons where they meet.
And so what if it took us months to say it with confidence?
And so what if it took us months of saying “See you tomorrow”
without knowing exactly when we started meaning it?
Saying it in a way that meant
“I see you in all my immediate tomorrows
and I hope I see you in what comes after that."

III
Ours is a morning coffee
but in bed till the afternoon type of romance,
a teeth brushed but midnight snack type of love.
I'm not as afraid of sleep as I used to be.
The nightmares that curled around every twilight waiting to pounce
have packed their bags and stepped quietly out the door.
And maybe you are the reason.

IV
I'm in the abandoned stadium today,
seeing everything play out like a montage
with the howling wind as the background music.
I open my eyes and my slipper nudges a loose bolt.
I pick it up, tilt my head, and carved a signature, a bright red pin.
I heard footsteps and wasn't surprised.
I thought you'd have known where to find me.
You reach out your hand, offering to take me home
but I point to the bleachers where I had written "We are here."

V
And you take the bolt and cross out a letter or two.
You smile and rise, offering your hand to me one more.
I see you have changed it to "We were here."
And I see now all the places we have been since.

The world is awake and real and so are we.
I stand up and we walk hand in hand
back into the unnamed streets.

Master-piece

And I found a hell in her,
a planet that became barren,
that used to teem with life,
that wore happy like spring
and promise like sunrise.

Where every lungful of oxygen
used to be sharply exhaled,
forming weightless laughter
the sort which echoes
in confined spaces
longer than a smile does.
How dulcet a sound
that has turn to destruction
with the most marred of instruments.
A toggle on the world's silence.

When feeling the weight
of her head on my fragile shoulder
sent anvils and anchors on my heart,
hornets stinging my ribcage,
begging to take more of me.
And the smile on her face,
a painting torn to pieces,
that I, the artist with no training
burned in my wake.

You will get better.
This isn't over.

Convergence Past the Fork

Our paths do meet and I see you again. We are both tired and wounded but tonight we sleep in each other’s arms and that is more than the other road could have given me. Your flushed cheeks and transparent eyes tell me you feel the same way.

And everything that has led to this has been worth it