The Poetry Marathon

TW: mention of suicide attempt, e/d and s/h

When I took my last overdose, I told my friend.
The one who lived with me.
The one who cooked for me when the thought of food sent me into a spiral.
The one who had been sacrificing her nights to sleep in my bed,
to make sure I was safe.

I guess it is sufficient to say, I was not.
I was not safe,
yet I don’t think I have ever been more cared about,
more looked after.

I miss our nights together,
it was bad but there was laughter.

Leaving you behind was the hardest thing I could do,
I love you to the moon and back but the moon was an egg
and it burst open so there was nowhere our love could lead us to.

Having you pin down my hands
was the most confronting thing you had to do.
I wanted you to know I was hurting myself under the blankets
but same-mindedly, did not want you to stop me from doing so.

So I guess it came as a relief, the day I called you to tell you
I am happy.
But to me, it was the end of a time
where you loved me more
than I loved life.
And it felt good to be wanted.

People can perceive a smile
from 300 feet away.
Your eyes light up,
though that I cannot see,
and unknowingly, my mouth corners tug
at my lips.

Faces are made to mimic one another,
so even when I have the capability
of five thousand other, different, expressions,
my smile will copy yours.

And it is not purely biology
for you will find that my fondness of you
will widen my smile.

I was at the airport,
scared I forgot what you look like,
but I will never ever forget the glee
on your face when our eyes crossed paths.

I was getting off the train,
didn’t know where you were.
My actions wild and frightened, I twist and turn
in all directions, but then I find the calm
of finding you right beside me.

I was sleeping,
woke up next to you.
And if that wasn’t the most fantastical thing in the world,
then I don’t know what it could be.

I have always thought drowning
a more fitting death than being burnt alive.
Though I hope to be cremated,
my ears don’t wish to bear witness to my personal demise.
I can imagine the way the flame
licks my fingers, the sheer beauty of it
would amaze me. If only my nerves were burnt
away first. If only my vocal cords were shredded
by the smoke already. If only my eyes
weren’t tearing up.
How the earth shakes with every footstep I take,
but once I am submerged in water
it all goes away. Fades into another shade of blue.
Water is more forgiving, its weight
gives space for the whole wide world
to pass through with a mere ripple.
This bodice of water uncontained,
forever floating in the abyss. The air we breathe
is part hydrogen, and our water bodies attract
each other’s poles of magnetic particles.
I can imagine it would hurt. I tried it
a few times, holding my breath
until my lungs would explode.
Tried imagining if it would be the same as breathing
in outer space, expansion of the lung
ending in rupture and asphyxiation.
A once fervent and angry ocean
breathing out, its waves slow down,
and another person,
just gone.
Maybe it’ll end like all things,
ashes returning to ashes,
water returning to calm.

I don’t have any specific memories
from when I was a child in Hong Kong,
just scraps of phrases and old photographs.
Scents and flavours, like the chocolate candy
filled with strawberry bubbles.

I do remember
when I ate it for the first time, again.

How its sweetness transported me back
to the green house in its heydays,
lychee trees in the gardens.
Two great-aunts at my beckoning.
The ice cream I would fetch twice a day,
I used to know my way around the village’s tricky alleyways.

Though in the early Summer heat the ice was more welcome,
it is the chocolate that unlocked my memories
and got me back to that patch of ground in the New Territories.
Though not a golden pastry in the shape of a boat,
not a madeleine, but a pearl in the mouth of the river delta,
I now rediscover treasures I never knew I lost.

Like that walk on the piers at night
I only know because of the picture at my grandparents’ place
on the nightstand next to my bed.
These photographs of old tell stories, show our care.

I discovered my great aunt kept a picture of my little sister,
finding her in the small red house brought back to me
feelings of being home amidst a family of strangers.
Come back again, she said.
And despite our linguistic distances,
I promised her
I would.

Gigan: Roe v Wade

They tried overruling history
but we would not let them, we came

to the streets. Waited in the bunker
that is a metro station in NYC.
We may have stood in silence for an hour

but you shall hear our voices.
You rid the country of its safety, pulled the trigger

on children’s deaths. Count their lingering
ghosts, count your own sins.

In this graveyard, we are pro-justice.
They tried overruling history

but you shall hear our voices.
Now my heart cannot go to rest at peace
when I think of all the people who have fought this battle before.

You did not ban abortion from this nation,
but took away the safety net for half the population.

I walked on roads of asphalt towards the big great dam, the pool reflecting the clouds in the child’s eyes. Its water the colour of the sky, it reminded me of the lakes in Slovenia that filtered themselves through layers of rock. Remember how you told me I was going to a petting zoo the day you would jump out of the sky? How it was a surprise, that I got to fly with you? I remember the car almost falling into pieces on the way up, kicking my feet in the air, how it almost failed. I do not remember my mother’s fear, only know about what she told me. How all the muscles in her body contracted. My mother is not a religious woman so she did not pray, but I want to believe she looked for all the dandelions in the field, rubbed her eyes so fiercely in search of an eyelash they turned a sleepy red only so she could wish for my safe landing right there on the big white x. All her kisses were with me, a mother’s child, hanging in the air living the best life. The cocoon a comfortable cushion among the well-travelled birds. My father was on the top of the mountain, ready to jump after me in case the parachute did not hold. After I landed, I hugged my mom. When my dad hit the ground, I hugged him. I will always remember the fireworks after. Feeling home. Feeling loved.

Dog’s make the world a better place

Give me a dog, let it lick
the serotonin back into my nervous
system – who called it the nervous
system anyway, as if any part of the body
wants to be the self-fulfilling prophecy
of a breakdown planted in its origin.

I have always wondered
how I would die. Like, overthought
it a hundred times, played it
on a loop so that every time I see myself
crossing the street I see me
getting hit on by a car.
Only the car did not like me, it hated me
for getting its bumper blemished.

Or when I walk down the stairs, I will see me
tripping and falling down.
I can already imagine the way my bones
will protrude my thick flesh vessel,
the dopamine-releasing adrenaline that will not be working
because hello, worst-case scenario doomsayer over here!
So yes, I will feel the pain.
And yes, it will feel like I was born three months early
and don’t know how to breathe yet.

So get me a dog, a fluffy puppy preferably,
and let it make me drown in oxytocin.
I will overdose on oxy if it makes me even the slightest degree
happier.
Make me believe my entire existence is not
what I thought it was, a miserable dark hole.
My birthday the devil’s holiday.
So let the dog’s birthday fall on this same satanic celebration,
where pigs are slaughtered just for the fun of it
and their organs are handed out as free-for-all gifts,
and then maybe,
maybe, it’ll turn angelic.

Maybe, I can call my dog a saint
for teaching me that life can be precious
when you give it the meaning
where there used to be a black hole.
How it would be so dense even light got sucked in,
but now the world is pulsing
and radiating like a PET-scan
of a cancerous child.
Because yes, the world is fucked up.
But yes, dogs make it better.

Oh, see the sun-
flower grow into the slant

of your smile.
Knit me a jumper

two sizes too big
so I can rise up to my existence,

fill up the space that once was
my self-doubted weeds growing

through cracks in the pavement.
I will thrive into an oak,

build tree houses as old as time.
For when they ask me about you,

I can tell them, we were meant
to be. One

hand placed upon my stomach,
the other guiding sleep

to my eyes. You told me to rest,
my darling, close your eyes

and fall into me. I will catch
you.

The Piano Forest

The piano forest
is where I want to grow old.
I haven’t touched its keys,
walked its pathways,
counted its leaves
in a while.

I hold my breath
when I look at green-filtered sunlight
on the mossy floors.
I am a plant, anxiously exchanging
the bright rays for oxygen–confusion.
I wish I was a plant, so I could leave behind
the anxiety and fade into the hills.

Taste the heat, it is
palpable, numbs my tongue.
If I were to be a plant, I’d be desert sage.
Let my wisdom turn the seedlings to trees.

I would be grown through the piano
in the forest, swarm myself onto the strings.
Imagine, the sun shining a light
upon my dead cells transmorphed
into the purple sun-shaped blossoms
that cover all the keys.

I haven’t played in a while,
but I like to imagine that when I do
again, the music will sound
like the mycelium when given a voice.

Exhaust pipes
leak nervous purple dreams,
the stardust that shines
through my fingers
will blind the audience.

Come at me and I will eat
your face, I say.
No words spilt, only your embrace
counts.
Don’t ever leave me, I think.

Traffic jams. My arteries are the blocked
roads through which you try to move,
slither, towards me.
The air is coarse. Doomed mountains
of despair loom in the distance.
Are you sure you want to advance?