Capturing Moments

Because we were young, because we were basically children, we were earnest.

"What would you do?" I asked.

"I guess I'd take you somewhere, top of the Empire State Building, maybe, or the World Trade Center. And then I'd say," and here you got down on one knee, "'Here we are at the tallest point in the city, maybe even the world, but I want you to take me higher.'"

I laughed, but not because it was cheesy. This was before I understood what corny meant, a few years before I even realized how cliched this moment potentially was. A couple of heartbreaks before I realized that words like these were carelessly uttered, hypothetical musings about the future often posed but never followed. I didn't know then exactly how easily forgotten vows could be, how every promise came with stipulations and fine print. My ears weren't tuned to the asterisks at the end of each declaration that lead to escape clauses. This was back when I thought the fate of my parents was the anomaly, not the norm.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, you gave me a ring pop, an edible promise ring.

It was only after a few years passed that I would realize how fitting it was. How after the sweet adoration have gone, devoured by our hungry mouths and hearts, what is left is just a cheap reminder of what was no longer there.

You were kneeling on the carpeted floor of the bedroom belonging to the teenage girl before you, a girl who taped a picture of Kevin Garnett above her bed and had newspaper clippings of Mike York and Tsuyoshi Shinj(y)o spread across her desk. It was so long ago that I was passing for a 12-year-old and getting Martin Brodeur bobble-head dolls. It was so long ago that the Devils still played in Continental Airlines Arena. It was so long ago that I couldn't think of anything better than spending the day with you at Shea, catching a $5 game against the Expos.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, I am amazed you lasted as long as you did.

You held me often, ran away often, laughed often, cried often. You tolerated my madness and sadness and sickness and craziness. You promised to major in psychology so you could help me, promised to take care of me, promised me I'd get better.

This was when you weren't yet mature, or realistic, or cynical. It was when you weren't yet aware of your personal limitations, when you weren't fully aware of the frustrations of my personal shortcomings. When I hadn't yet found better hiding places for my vices, before I had grown up, and calmed down. This was when I'd still call every night, panicking, thinking the world was going to end, thinking my life was going to end. Before attempts and psychiatrists and hospitals and institutions. Before I even knew what borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia was.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, we were earnest.

I didn't know yet that this would happen again and again. In the basements of boys who would play "Question" by the Old '97s, or in front of fancy restaurants in Saratoga, or on the beaches of southern California watching the sun set over the Pacific, or in Subaru Forresters in front of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Sometimes with rings, sometimes without. Sometimes by people who are still in love with me, sometimes by people I'd rather never see again.

But it comes back to that corny line, to that ring pop, to the innocence of teenage love. I don't mind that I'll never feel it again--I have places to go, things to do, worlds to save. But I felt it once. And it was enough.

On the way home

watching the raindrops gather
at the edge of the dashboard
pushed by the wipers
removed completely from
where it naturally fell
i bite my lips tasting for
a testament of your kiss
proof of a connection we had
just a few moments and miles ago
but after leaving perhaps, when
the string is cut with precision,
whatever had tied me to you,
caused me to stay awake at 3 am
worrying, wondering what
i could do for you, now severed
you find it simple to be content
without me, i think you know
longing is finite and now that i'm gone,
left no piece of myself behind
except a few strands of hair,
travel size shampoo and conditioner,
my thoughts, affections, fondness
i hear on the radio Beltran hit a home run
and it dawns that in this moment
you are happy and that's enough
to make me (at this moment) happy too

Muse

If it was love, I had no idea. If it was romance, it was more than just a grown man with long shaggy hair, a nomad from the highlands, a bastard son of the Tibetan plateau and Mongolian steppes, corrupting a young girl who'd returned to her motherland after leaving at a young age, assimilating to western culture, acquiring a foreign accent.

Every time I say, "I think of the highland praries, as my home" what I'm really saying is "I still think of myself as 'yours.'" Maybe it was the thin air at those high altitudes but what I gave up in those five days traveling north and west will never come back to me. I will never have it again to give up to someone else. Though there were others before you and after you, and probably long after you, no one can possess me that way again, because there was finality--even for a 17 year old.

You told me about Kokonor lake and the pilgrimage your father took you on to the Mahadeva on the island in it, and how the rivers we were passing were sisters in search of their princes much farther south, when they'd go their separate ways into Laos, Vietnam and India. Who cared you were years and years older than me. You saw yourself as as a poet amongst warriors, and you saw me as a warrior amongst sheep.

When I occassionally dream of you, and it doesn't happen often, I can't be sure you were ever real. These memories are torn at the edges and lose focus the more I concentrate. I haven't had any contact with you since almost six years ago.

What I do have imprinted in my head is the night you told my mom you were going to take me around Hongyuan so I could experience the local life a little bit better. So we went, me in the back of a cart, and you pedaling past the 800 year old buildings that were protected from the cultural revolution by distance and remoteness. When I looked up like you told me to, I saw all the legends you'd been telling me. Up here, ten thousand feet above sea level, the stars told the myth of how the milky way was formed because the smoke from a pipe was so strong, it floated up to the heavens and tied the celestial bodies together. These were your fathers and your grandfathers and one day you hoped to ascend there as well.

But that was only half of you. When your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, she took their last yak to the tulku to bless the birth. The tulku accepted this gift and gave your grandmother a dzi bead that was passed down to you and hung around your neck. You rarely it showed it, and it's normally tucked beneath your shirt but that night, you let me touch it. There are five eyes, you said, pointing to the markings, it is a dzi mig nga.

And later, on the back of that cart, against thousands of years of your history, my history, interwined and crossing each other in one moment and who cares that I was young and you were weathered. We weren't talking about love, weren't talking about how we knew we'd never see each other again. We never gave each other information and if we did, what could we do? You barely read Chinese and I barely wrote it.

Afterwards, you took to calling me Sarangerel because I shone even with all the stars in the sky and I laughed at you because it was too corny but so much less so because of who you were, because of where we were. I'd listen to your songs and poems, about your Sarangerel and you say, can't you hear, Mongolian is much better sung, it is still not a good language to be written. And the ballads would pour out, loudly, proudly from your vocal chords long perfected by the mountains of Kham.

You loved listening to me speak english. These weird sounds coming out of my mouth, and you'd try to match it. It was worth it you said, just to hear me speak English. You never took tourists around but we were a special case, a favor you owed to someone who owed someone who owed my aunt. So I'd recite poetry in English and you'd pray for me in Tibetan, serenade me in Mongolian and you didn't want me learning a PRC stained version of your languages so you'd have me say "tashi dele" the right way.

It's not that I didn't meet anyone else in China that year. Not that they didn't make that trip memorable in some way. Not that I don't still think of them sometimes, like the UBC engineer who was a Canucks fan and allowed me a couple of mornings of waking up next to someone who let me ramble on about hockey in a country that neither knew or cared for my favorite sport or the German globetrotter who was biking from Shanghai to (hopefully) Tel Aviv.

Nor is it that I think you never had another Sarangerel or even Tsetsegmaa or Khulan but here I am, six years older, writing about you. And I wonder, but not often, whether the six years wiser version of you ever sing about me?

A piece of paper I kept in my wallet for 4 years and lost 9 months ago

Maybe you reminded him of a girl he once knew, back in the '90s, when he was still at Swarthmore. Sophomore year, maybe junior year. A social anthropology major with cinnamon hair and mocha eyes who he used to see all the time in the library pouring over dissertations by Phillippe Bourgois. She'd often hunch over her books on the third floor, near the corner, at the lectern on which someone had proudly announced with a sharp object: "I had sex on this desk!" He'd had a brief encounter with her once, when she dropped her retractable orange highlighter. He'd picked it up for her and for a nanosecond, as she took it from him, there were no molecules of nitrogen, oxygen and argon between his fingers and hers. And the way you sat there in the cafe at St. Mark's, your body bent forward over the table between you and your friend reminded him of her silhouette and he couldn't help but feel that same urge to rub shoulders with you. Just to share one succinct note of arbitrary courtesy.

Or maybe you reminded him of a girl he roomed with for six months who he found on Craigslist a few years ago. She used to breeze in and out of the apartment like a western zephyr, carrying an air of simple delicacy. Some nights though, she would come home and not even be able to make it to her bedroom, which was farther back than his. Instead she would collapse onto the second-hand sofa that was in the apartment before either of them moved in, and curl up into a fetal position before passing out while still wearing the same bohemian top and long patchworked skirt she'd thrown on in the morning. When he walked past the couch, he could smell on her a mix of the rosewater soap she used and the scent of fruity cocktails and he'd wonder whether as a roommate he was obligated or as an acquaintance he was expected to comfort her, give her a shoulder to cry on or at least carry her to her bed. So it was the same, when he walked past your table on his way to the bar for the last round for him and his buddy that the bouquet of floral essences fused with the three bellinis you've had in one hour wafted towards him and gave him another chance at rising to the occasion.

But most likely, you reminded him of the receptionist at William Morris who had the most amazing mop of fiery red hair that cascaded about and singed the edges of her face. He'd always suspected she'd come to the city because she wanted to be a writer to document the stark contrast between dreams exploding and defering here at the center of the universe. He'd figured she wanted to be a poet by her lyrical messages she sent to remind him of his appointments with his agent. That particular day, before his chance encounter with you, he'd stopped by the office and spoke with her for a few moments before her coworker or maybe boss or maybe secret lover behind closed doors spouted out a few curt words before disappearing out onto 6th Ave. Her face fell and he crumpled, he really did because he felt there was nothing he could have done for her. But a few hours later, a few miles south, a few beers downed, here you are. The same flash in your eyes, the same biting of the lip and droplets of salty disappointment, waiting to be saved.

When you realized what he'd written, he was already gone. You never even saw what he looked like. All that was in your memory was a young man in a brown coat, dropping a folded piece of paper on your table and walking out the front door. Your friend looked on as you took a break from your weeping to unfold that flyer for beads and strings and fanciful things. On the back, written in black pen, with the word "so" underlined three times, was the following: "cheer up. you are so beautiful."

Last Words

"I love her and when I'm not screwing things up with her, we can be very happy. I don't want to risk that happiness in any way."
"Then don't do anything to risk it."
"But I can't always control how I feel."
"You can feel the same things even if we never speak again."
"But you forget most of the time that there's something else and in that ignorance, you're happy."

If I was honest about it

I will disregard passion propaganda
renounce rolling crests of sentimentality
that easily drag me under and trap me
so I will no longer have to claw my way up
through water, through amber, through history--
soporific reveries kept barely afloat

it no longer matters whether I’m adrift
because when your lips burn my skin, I see
midnight sky spangled with stuttering fireworks
and your fingertips drawing me past
the meridian create seismic disturbances
that ripple through every cell in my body

and perhaps I am not so alone when I feel
your arms enveloping me, like the sea
ready to birth dreams I didn’t dare dream before
with wave after wave pulsing fantasies
pushing me up and pulling me down
forcing me to dive deep for your affection

and I do again and again and again
often forgetting to come up for air
because I’ve been distracted by your depth
your commitments and convictions
dedication and devotion embodied by
your favorite Chinese character

yet once in a while, when I raise myself above
the height of each coming current, I panic
on the brink of sanity in danger of plunging
and plummeting but your knack for calming me
(so I can make a few not-so narrow escapes
from death, drowning) keeps me buoyant

of course this hope of earth-shaking intensity
has not capsized to the sometimes stormy
sometimes treacherous, always unpredictable waters
but if you need to know, you could toss me towards
the rocky shore, splintering my vessel into fragments
so how can I say you cannot shatter my world

Villanelle II

Let us lie beneath our own gilded shell
In silent darkness hallucinate night
This could be heaven or this could be hell.

Inside this fissure our eidolons dwell
Engage discourses of sweetness and light
Let us live beneath our own gilded shell

Where satin embraces and senses swell
A pair of silken tongues dance in delight
This could be heaven or this could be hell

Perhaps to escape from devotion's cell
Unleashed a tempest of lunacy and spite
Let us die beneath our own gilded shell

When did the dome fall I could never tell
Collapsing under fractures split during fights
This could be heaven or this could be hell

When dawn waltzes towards us and breaks the spell
You shall have to depart but for tonight
Let us lie beneath our own gilded shell
This is our heaven and this is our hell

Mommy

I want to scream and shriek at you
instead and not write passively.
I should be damning your weak weak soul,
should be giving into my anger
and devour your delusions whole.
I want to take your fatal flaw and shove

it deep down low into my throat.
Digest your insecurities, neediness,
meekness, weakness. You do not have to
suffer all the betrayals of the world.
There are other people to know,
plenty of promising places to roam
but you shake your head, you shake it

no. There is nothing for you to atone
but you continue to atrophy, let your body
waste in misery. You lie and smile
and say you have forgotten all your woes,
you are content now, but you have never
been so tired, your eyes were never so red.

You continue to let the rain and snow
storm and blizzard pelt you and throw
absolutely everything they have at you.
You sigh and declare you are at peace,
you whisper, “Love can break my bones.”
But I don’t want to come back home

find you on the kitchen floor again,
don’t want to find your spirit or your back
broken, your fantasies exploded all over
the granite countertop. There is so much
in this world, so much besides him.
Don’t you see, you have me? I will never go.

Note to Self II

I cannot save the world
despite my Mother Teresa
  complex.
I shouldn't be counted on to salvage
anything, even the dying
plumeria plant
sitting on the kitchen
window sill.

I must forgive myself sometimes
because I will continue to make mistakes
I will keep on using too many
nested “ifs” or access
  indexer of objects
too often. I will accidentally
hurt you even
when I don't mean to.

There are things I am bound to forget:
dates of various World War I
  battles, our battles,
what size shoes you wear,
your favorite dish at Russ & Daughters
on Houston.

But I remember
watching Persepolis at Angelika,
the smell of snow, Jenny Lake
and the way your hair
  curls to the left
right in front of your eyes.

I say things I'd like to
lasso back
because careless
  arrangement of the alphabet
makes a mess of things,
too much lost in translation
from thoughts to words.

I fall and stumble
most likely when the ground
is smooth and there is very little
  change in the terrain
and sometimes, in love,
but always, into life

I will not lie
catatonic in front of Scrubs reruns
while you wash the dinner plates
(because you know I hate
  the smell of dish detergent)
and on that note, I will never lie.

I Used To Paint Still Life

I used to paint food
on tables, and kitchen counters
bloody messes not yet cleansed
remnants of battles to please you
sometimes headless chickens
wings and legs spread wide
each bump on its featherless skin
a message in braille if only
you could reach across the threshold
of canvas and oil and pigment

other times it would be fruit
pomegranates kernels spilling
across the landscape
of oakwood grains, knots,
bright citrus orphans
amongst Maloideae cousins
and of course the bananas

rarely, on occasion, I'd paint
the room you left behind
the desk a mess since
you never came as a swan,
or an eagle but rather violent lightning
amidst bellowing thunder
scattering and shattering blueprints
and models of future plans we made long ago

but I forget these perspectives
have been perfected by those
with better digital dexterity
and finger choreography
Chardin had already made his mark
with a far more provocative animal
than the chicken and Galizia's peaches
are more beautiful, more ripe
soft to even look at, good at
awakening memories of the nights
when you stroked her skin
and the light fuzz beneath your fingertips
reminded you that this is not me
Peto and Harnett's depictions:
worn-out books and stained letters
often mistaken for real objects lining the walls,
strewn on top of the shelf, yet mine,
clumsy stabs at recreating
a love letter from Moab

What You May Not Know About Superlatives

What you may not know about superlatives is that they can be used to compare two things as well. You may have only loved twice, but this girl, standing right in front of you, with the smooth soft skin, she is the best love of your life. This is a correct usage. Though only two people may have come with you to this crepe restaurant, the one with the blond hair had the nicest body. She had the shapeliest thighs, the perkiest breasts.

What you may not know about superlatives is that timing is very important. You have the most symmetrical face I've ever seen. Let's have the most expensive dinner you've ever had, at the top of the highest peak overlooking the prettiest city in Asia. And later bedboards creak. This handmade candle is the most thoughtful present I've ever received. Then up against a brick wall in some alley way. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. This is the saddest moment of my life. From this instant on, every nanosecond will be ever so slightly better than the one before it.

What you may not know about superlatives is the way it easily governs your life. But you said I was the most important person you know. You are the biggest liar I've met. The sweetest words you've ever said were never true. You are the deepest scar of all the hundreds of scars that I carry on me. These things are said and all of a sudden your world of hyperbole and exaggeration focuses and you see how it's just that you feel the most out of your peers. That though what burnt you may not have been the hottest flame, you suffered the worst pain.

What you may not know about superlatives is that you'll always think in their terms. She is the biggest mistake I've ever made. I will always want you the most. And you'd forgive him. Or maybe he'd say, she was the worst kisser I've ever cheated on you with. Maybe if you were the skinniest, prettiest, kindest, smartest, or sweetest person he'd ever known, none of this would have happened. Maybe if you were better...but you can't think in comparatives. After all, comparatives only measure two, and there are will always be more than two options for him.

What they don't tell you about superlatives is their power to heal. You are the most awesome person I know. You share the most values with me. And even if you heard these before, even if you've heard them numerous times (while listening to him strum "Question" by the Old '97s, or on top of Teton Village, or down the hallway on the 4th floor where your locker was sophomore year) you can still feel your heart begin to beat in a normal rhythm. The extremes are being balanced out. You are the most perfect person in the world for me right now. This is the most comfortable place for me today. I fit best next to you tonight.

But what you may not know about superlatives is that they always have a shelf life.

If

If I finally lose these 15 lbs. If I could be flatter where you'd like, and less flat at other places, smooth out my hair and temper, use makeup for my face, make up for my shortcomings

If I could share with you the wisdom of sepia photographs and explain that memories fade for a reason and that we can't force others to think and feel as we do because the red of yesterday, last month, or 20 years ago may only be the pastel pink of today

If I conceded that yes, I should go to the gym more often and that maybe that is the reason why he left, and I should be less obstinate because I will never be loved as I am, and I should take relationships more seriously even though I thought I did

If I could cross this span of 30 years and traverse with a great leap forward, bridge your cultural revolution with mine, tunnel through the earth and time itself to path together Bob Dylan and Liu Sanjie

If I gave up my vagabond dreams and got married, had a couple of girls who you could have a second chance with since, though you love her, your first daughter is not at all what you wanted

If I became brutally honest and told you that he hasn't loved you in years maybe even decades, that you're being absolutely asinine trying to chain someone to where he doesn't want to be

If I laid down these self righteous words, settled at your feet and made myself content to stay here with you, be a better daughter--no the best daughter

If I could make you forget, give up on the fantasies that run wild in your head while the winter night spreads its gaze on you as you toss and turn in your bed that's just one body short of comfortable

If I accept that I can't save everyone and it's better to let others fight their own battles, that using myself as a human shield will only delay the healing process and render myself full of holes

Will it be enough to save you?

Touch #1

This was the first time S**** didn’t understand him. There were 37 in all. 9 long ones. 14 with tongue. 3 while holding her face with two hands. 4 while holding with one. 1 with his hand on her left shoulder.

Were they for reassurance? Were they to say that tomorrow will be okay? Was it for goodbye? Was he trying to gauge whether it was possible to leave all the different kisses behind? Was he measuring his dependence on desire?

Outside, the moon hung ceremoniously against a navy blue backdrop.

Her mouth had dreams too. Her lips had fantasies, her tongue, ideals. And this wasn’t it. This was tentative. The dome of darkness wouldn’t be lifted until tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow the sky might fall. The stars might crash down. The clouds will descend and slip through her fingers, and seep into the ground where they will disappear forever. The comets and asteroids will plummet towards the earth. The gravity of tomorrow will solely determine the future.

She didn’t rest her hand on his chest that night. Nor his on hers. They both knew that before they fell asleep the next time, there will either be a new beginning or a decisive end. Without his rhythmic breaths under her palm, she found it much harder to sleep. She wondered how she’d be able to adapt to the absence of the lifts and falls of his nightmares. She wondered if he’d miss her own ebb and flow of cravings. The up and downs of her principles

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’ll know. Tomorrow will be heaven or tomorrow will be hell.