Where is safe?

I’m exhausted with the news lately. Why is it not safe to be anywhere?

Your homes, your workplaces, your schools, your churches.

Where is safe now?

I don’t know how it feels to travel across to ocean, to go to the promised land, to get a new life.

I don’t know how it feels when your house is tore down and the only way you can save yourself and your family is to jump onboard a boat.

I don’t know how it feels living somewhere people don’t speak your language, even when you pronounced everything correctly.

There are assaults on people of colour every day, every where.

A Korean girl almost got hit on the street in Germany just because of her skin.

They made fun of her face, her eyes, her voice, her roots.

7 Asian women who are younger than my mum were killed by a 21 year old horny white guy. Sexually frustrated? Oh please, he did it because he wanted to. How about that for a reason?

I’m sick of all these news and they kept coming.

International Women’s day was just a week ago and now we all had to suffer from women killings.

Some women and men thought of feminists nowadays are being too spoiled to cook, to clean, to cater. A Vietnamese women spokesperson went online and shamed the women who think they don’t belong in the kitchen.

Instead of fighting together, we are fighting each other.

So instead of respecting who we are as human, they picked up the guns and shoot us. Most of the time, they don’t shoot with bullets. Sometimes, with words. Sometimes, with a fist. Sometimes, with a stare. Sometimes, just by thinking.

t.l.

I don’t blame you

I don’t blame you

for pulling me down

when all I wanted

is lifting up to the clouds

I don’t blame you

you were trying to protect me

you said, I was too weak

for sailing the big sea.

I don’t blame you

for trying to stay grounded

I don’t blame you

for all we’ve been through uncounted time.

I don’t blame you

for staying around.

you wanted to stay silent

when I wanted to scream out loud.

I don’t blame you

I stopped that years ago

I wanted to love you

as part one to my part two.

I don’t blame you

as I was pulled to the ground

I will gain more lever

to fly even higher.

t.l.

(it is okay to love all parts of you, even the ones you want to hide away. it is okay to be friends with your monsters, as they are there to remind you that you can be so much more. stay strong. learning to love yourself is a life journey. the reward is worth it).

Cyclone

chances might have brought us together

but god, what I would give to know

that choosing to stay is like

fighting against bad weather

swimming upstream with a broken nose

driving down the highway with my eyes closed

loving you is like

chasing down the biggest storm

until you get to the hurricane eye

it was worth it,

even on the darkest nights.

t.l.

shy cat

a shy cat looks out the window

it sees the world, the wonders

it yearns to step outside

to smell the grass

to go seek and hide

but it’s too afraid

afraid of the noise

and strangers’ face

fighting itself every day

one step further

to overcome its most terror.

t.l.

(introvert scaredy cat)

Pearl

oh pearl,

turn me into something beautiful

swallow me up and spit me out

I swear I will be faithful.

a grain of dessert sand

wishing it was buried deep

in the Pacific ocean

I know it’s unlikely to meet

but will you come and make me

magnificent?

t.l.

blue birds

as night falls,

and I start to roll with it

keep myself in these four walls

until the world finally disappears

I understand the fears

they creep up on you like falling leaves

like shivers, like hungry thieves

but you mustn’t surrender

you are not a fragment

of people’s judgement

you are not a burden

to the ones who love you

please remember,

hiding away is never an answer

the blue birds never stop singing

even in cages,

even without its wings.

t.l.

Goldfish

I have a little goldfish

from dusk to dawn,

she swims around

in her little pond

from this minute

to the next

she already forgot

how she was born

she asked me,

“where do I come from?

is it the big sea?

or did I come to you

in a storm?”

she hated when I

changed her water

looked at me with her

telescopic eyes

don’t tell me fishes can cry

she told me

her bowl is too tight

there is no space

for her fins to grow

I didn’t listen

I didn’t want to know

as long as I keep her here

in this little bowl

maybe she will remember

that I’m a friend

not a captor.

t.l.

(fishes need more space to grow. and so do we.)