A respite

Facts about you: 

1. You always wrote with such finality, it made me swell with romance but thick in doubt of what our end would be. 

2. This is not about you, it's about me, about how when I saw you,how  everytime I see you, I feel my eyes lit up in hope. 

3. I remember your face lying on your palm, you look away, pensive, I couldn't read your thoughts, you felt so far away from me. My eyes watered unknowingly, I think it's because I tried to swim towards you but you were too far away. I blinked and the blur was washed away. I blinked and you were no longer here. 

4. You love your highlighters. You highlight all your important points in blue, the things you want to take note of in yellow, the things you find hard to remember in orange. 

Is it strange how I think the first few months we met you always wore a blue shirt, the later part of our life together you always spelled my name yellow and the last time I saw you, you cocked your head to the side, as if I was orange, as if you no longer remembered me. 

Have strength

After so many things, after so many hazy miles,
not sure which kingdom it is, not knowing the terrain,


travelling with pitiful hopes,


and lying companions, and suspicious dreams,


I love the firmness that still survives in my eyes,


I hear my heart beating as if I were riding a horse,


I bite the sleeping fire and the ruined salt,
and at night, when darkness is thick, and mourning furtive,


I imagine I am the one keeping watch on the far shore


of the encampments, the traveller armed with his sterile defenses,


caught between growing shadows


and shivering wings, and my arm made of stone protects me.

—Pablo Neruda, from “Sonata and Destructions,”Twenty Poems (The Sixties Press, 1967)

Would i have to pass you by

Haven't been blogging here since mid of last year.

School is busier this semester. Maybe it's being on my third year, or maybe the second semester is always harder than the first but the projects have been getting harder and the stress of the internship and dissertation proposal submission and which professor i would be getting. I have been feel very high strung.

Life has otherwise been stressful too. Things at home are not going good, i have been feeling too stressed to do anything sometimes and this leave work piling up as usual. Jiayi is away on exchange this semester and not being able to meet her as i did the previous stress has left a bit of a hole in my life. Her exchange at Paris has been wonderful but also trying at times. She visited Cheryl at London during March and they were able to hang out and tour around a bit. They took a group photo with my picture on Cheryl phone. The picture made me smile and tear up a bit. It has been awhile since we could really meet to catch up or even just celebrate something together. I wish this summer we could do something together.

Miss my girls 

Black flies on the windowsill
That we are
That we are
That we are to know
Winter stole summer's thrill

And the river's cracked and cold

See the sky is no man's land
A darkened plume to stay
Hope here needs a humble hand
Not a fox found in your place

No man is an island, this I know
But can't you see?
Maybe you were the ocean when I was just a stone

Black flies on the windowsill
That we are
That we are
That we are to hold
Comfort came against my will
And every story must grow old

Still I'll be a traveler
A gypsy's reins to face
But the road is wearier
With that fool found in your place

No man is an island, this I know
But can't you see?
Maybe you were the ocean when I was just a stone

No man is an island, this I know
But can't you see?
Maybe you were the ocean when I was just a stone

So here we are

And I don't wanna beg your pardon
And I don't wanna ask you why
But if I was to go my own way
Would I have to pass you by?

And I don't wanna beg your pardon
And I don't wanna ask you why
But if I was to go my own way
Would I have to pass you by?

speak until the dust
settles in the same specific place
light refused to go
drink it from a cast and iron plate
instead of cold milk
was offered unripe
instead of silence
considered craven

nothing made it seem
hidden where the aging soil was pure
pressed against the crease
mountains become fragrant at the source
how can you stand this
exotic angle
i read it somewhere 
that they would lie still

i remember how cloth hung
flexing with the forest clung
half waist and high raised arms
kicking at the slightest form
i remember my first love
i remember my first love

unrelied i was called
missing teeth out of favour
nickel beach it was all
gathering by the sundial

i woke hard
i woke heavy 
for the half way stop
five whole hours in
when i woke hard 
i woke heavy with the live or parts 

i remember how cloth hung
flexing with the forest clung
half waist and high raised arms
kicking at the slightest form
i remember my first love
i remember my first love

i remember my first love