Undone

I faintly remember the way you lean on the side of the door

When you’re trying to say something we after beat ourselves up in words.

You remind me of those young male protagonists

Swooning over their heroines.

You sometimes made me feel that the moments we were having

Were bleak memories ---uncertain, irrational but always there,

And no matter how vague, they never cease.

The way you squint your eyes when you're holding something back

Reminds me of the countless arguments we settled in silence;

While a revolution is rising in the deeper and inner workings of our hearts.

I will always remember that five minutes of beautiful awkwardness

We shared when we first met.

You were boisterous, I was eccentric. We were both bemused.

I clearly remember how I loved you when you didn’t know

and how you told me you loved me when I didn’t anymore.

I remember, brutally. How can I forget those words?

--Sept. 8, 2013

Her story

“What could be worse than a love that cannot be returned,” I asked.

They say it is the strongest yet the most painful,

To love someone who never loved you and will never love you back.

They say it’s like holding the right ticket trying to catch the wrong train that has long passed.

They say you feel suffocated but you never learn to stop.

They tell me in broken words and melancholic sighs,

“What could be worse than that?”

But she kept silent without knowing how they’ll ever learn

Of a love worse than a love unreturned

She tells me, “how can I describe a love so true but never pure?”

A love that long ago enslaved courtesans, chained men and women alike in places,

In memories and dreams they never should’ve been.

They silently die in corners, weeping for something, for someone in between.

She tells me of a love that can risk death but not life,

Such selfish, discrete, unspeakable, inconsolable love

For someone worthy and unworthy at the same time,

Of something so terribly wrong, that even those who claim to be righteous

Fall deep into this self-made trap

She tells me of wailing voices, pleading for love,

And a little more light, and mostly forgiveness.

Let her tell you more of a love for someone who loves back but is somebody else’s.

-Dec. 8, 2013