The gods hear me.
They might choose to respond, or not.
Listening is enough. Many of us don’t even feel heard,
let alone saved.
Salvation isn’t promised even to those with faith:
though it might help alleviate that terror
at the very end.

It’s an illusion.

It’s an illusion that we are apart.

It’s an illusion that I am here, and you are there, and our hearts beat slower alone.

It’s an illusion that behind the screens we can hide from the sadness of our souls and share only the sunny parts.

I can cry onstage too.

I can cry on Zoom.

I can cry even when there is a bright smile on my face.

I can cry even when the tears refuse to make themselves known to the earth.

It’s an illusion that we are not who we really are, when we are rectangular,

When we need to navigate our interactions with buttons

When we need to mute and unmute ourselves, consciously

Unlike when we are in the same room together.

It’s an illusion that this is not real,

It’s an illusion that this ever is

We can be together even when we are apart

We can be apart even when we are together

It is in moments like this that I realize many things that used to matter do not matter anymore

And for good reason, and it will be fine to go forward like this

Because there is no way back anyway, and whatever life hands to us

We will take it like the champions that we don’t usually know ourselves to be

And take it for as long as life allows us to.

It’s an illusion that this will forever last

It’s an illusion that there will ever be an end

Đi đâu? Cuối ngày rồi,
những con đường đã trở thành quá cũ.
Đến đây, tôi nhìn thấy một ngôi nhà xây năm 1745,
tường sơn vàng, viền xanh lá,
bên một căn nhà kho đỏ sậm
với những khung cửa sổ nghiêng và kính vỡ,
như thể thời gian đã ngả vào đó
từ rất lâu rồi.
Tôi nghe tiếng xe từ phía xa lộ,
gần rồi xa, không dừng lại
như lịch sử không dừng lại
như chúng ta đã trễ hẹn với ngày mai.

Tôi tới, tôi im lặng
ngắm ngọn lửa từ từ dâng lên
trong một chiếc lò tự xây
của một người làm gốm
đến sống ở đây hồi đầu tháng mười một
sau khi bão tuyết tạt ngang bang Texas
và cô nhận ra mình không biết cách sống chung với mùa đông như thế nào.

Nên cô học cách tự sưởi ấm mình từ Montana,
và tìm đến ngôi nhà xưa cũ này ở Massachusetts,
học cách sống với những xoay vần đổi thay của vùng đất bốn mùa.

They said – it was not about the color of your skin,
or the fact that you were a woman, none of those things;
your death was simply
a tragedy, an accident, a sad coincidence
caused by someone with a mental illness.

Such an insult to your truth, to what it means to have a mental illness,
to your being an Asian woman in a world where you were seen as a woman, an Asian,
a person who was not white, not male, not anything
for whom the media so readily provides an excuse.
They choose the narrative that brings them the least discomfort,
not one that shows the darkness of the world in which you can be executed
by someone who had the audacity to claim his act of murder was about lust.
The killer lusted for blood, the same red blood in his veins,
only beneath a different appearance from his.

And yet so many of them are saying, no,
that is the self-victimization mentality.
They’re saying that to you who literally were the victim of a hate crime,
whose life was taken away – not even because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time,
but because the murderer invaded your space,
as if this earth were not big enough for everyone regardless of their gender, and race,
and everything else that makes us different and makes us one.

You are dead. Many of you died. Many of you will die, if they keep breeding the lies,
convincing themselves and others that this could have happened to anyone,
that they choose to not see colors when one of the colors were red, that of your blood
spilling over their head, their conscience – does everyone not have one?, their rhetoric.
But the truth is this:
this. is. a. hate. crime.
this. is. a. murder.
and anyone who claims otherwise is an accomplice
in an act against humanity, against what we all want for our country,
our children, our future.

And now every time I walk out on the street, I would wonder
if my mask and clothes were enough to conceal me, to protect me:
my woman’s body, my Asian skin, my identity
that should matter and not matter just as much as anybody’s,
but it doesn’t:
in Atlanta, just the other day,
people who looked just like me were murdered
just because of how they looked.