Stay

take off your coat

leave your shoes at the door

come lay with me

say ‘I don’t want to lose you anymore’

take a cat with you

put on my perfume

grab my wrist

and pull me closer

then push me away.

you know I wouldn’t mind

this game of push and pull

pin me on the bed

whisper in my head

tell me I’m pretty

I’m too beautiful

so you could go run around

and look for the next best thing.

t.l.

stay

happy now.

why would you leave

is this life too cruel,

too brutal for you?

did someone hurt you

so much you had to run away?

it’s been nearly four years

since you’ve been gone

but I couldn’t stop blaming myself

for not seeing you the last time.

are you happy now?

where there’s no sadness

no pain, no misery

are you happy?

please tell us that you are.

I’m sorry

for not doing the right thing

for not stopping you

for not saying goodbye

one last time.

I’m sorry

I’ve missed you

we all do.

t.l.

if you feel like there’s no escaping, please call someone right away. or you can always talk to me.

Please don’t choose that road, we’re the ones that are left with tears and regrets, for not saving you in time.

For Linh.

Joy and Woe

Joy and woe are woven fine.

William Blake

I thought about this quote a lot. How pain and happiness are actually equal. They’re both on the same spectrum. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t know joy if you never experienced misery. Well, I guess you can. To an extent.

A few years ago, I used to love being in pain because it’s what familiar most to me. I used to dig into my deepest fears – of being abandoned, lied to, cheated on – and cried myself into sleep every night. I thought being sad and miserable is what I was, that this is my destiny, to be sad and write about it. I let it define me. What’s more beautiful than a sad poem?

I slowly learned that being sad doesn’t equal beautiful. That if you keep lying to yourself, you will soon believe that you’re the saddest person on Earth. Maybe it was for the sake of writing? Or maybe it was easier to be that person? I don’t know. Maybe it was hard for me to accept that I could be happy in the end.

I tried to be positive. Write happier poems. Write more prose. Keep track of what I’m feeling. Write when I’m not sad. Write when it’s not 2am and I have just cried my heart out. Write in the morning. Write after a nap. Write after a long day working. I had to force myself to smile sometimes, but it worked.

A writer won’t be able to publish a book if they just write “whenever they feel like it”. It’s not just about play, it’s about work too. I can’t sell my tears for a price. I can’t let people think I’m this melancholic person who refuses every chance to be happy. I can’t let myself think the same.

Maybe I’m not a tsunami anymore. Maybe I’m the first snow. Maybe I’m the spring breeze. Maybe I’m the summer wave. Maybe I can be all those beautiful and fortunate things. Maybe I am the ground. Maybe I am the air. Maybe I’m just me, and not a natural disaster.

I can be everything. And at the end, I can finally be me.

t.l.

Sun shower

my hair is thicker than my body

my blood is turning into beer

i used to be okay with silence

but now it’s killing me.

the nights seem longer

the days look unreal

i’m smiling one minute

and crying the next.

like a sun shower

don’t tell me to go slower

don’t tell me I need to calm down

i can be all the things

and nothing at once.

t.l.