In those days, at every corner of the city
you could find a coffee shop.

There was never a high-rise building,
everything stood together in an unorganized manner,
for they never mastered the art of urban landscaping.

Street vendors had their own way of singing
their promotion songs. You remembered the tune, the words,
which reminded you of those streets.

The sounds of vehicles and their horns and the winds
never stopped. But in those days, they used to be
purer. Clearer. More innocent, perhaps. Less troubled.

Life never stops being tough,
but it was quite beautiful,
then.

When I grew up
the city was still left with fragments of history.
I had no memory of what had happened before I was born,
yet you felt in the air the gentle sadness, and the subtle beauty
from those French buildings. The architecture
slowly faded away as icons from the war,
becoming part of our modern life.
We had to move on,
and so did everyone who had left.

Those buildings, instead, became icons of my childhood,
of what I remembered about the city.
From my elementary school,
you could see the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica to your left,
the Central Post Office right in front of you.
I was always taken home via the street former known as
the Rue Catinat.

I would never forget the way it felt every afternoon.
I’m going home.

Those places have changed, and so have people,
and so have I.
The day they demolished Givral Cafe,
Xuan Thu Bookstore, Passage Eden,
the whole street block of memories,
was the day many of us lost something so deep in our heart.
History was gone once again.
And soon enough,
we would allow ourselves to forget once again.

I keep reminding myself,
Hey, it’s ok to change.
My city does not repond to me.
It just becomes so foreign,
as if it has always belonged to somebody else
but me. And I keep digging
into the dust, the traces, the pictures
to find solace in what I could remember
about my changed lover.

They say, in the end it does not matter,
modern society needs revolutions.
Evolutions. Higher skyscrapers. Highways.
A North-South express railway even (Idea rejected.)
We need to catch up with the rest of the world.

Oh, dear men, I am fine with that. I am an easy fellow
who seldom feels too strongly about anything in particular.
But my heart keeps aching from some changes you guys make.
It outraged the day you took down my corner of memories.
I was in Boston reading the news my friends sent me,
picturing myself sitting at those steps in front of the Opera House
looking at the mass of broken bricks and dust
that was once a nice, little, iconic coffee shop-
Givral.

When my friend talked to me about changes around that block,
she talked in a tone that almost seemed guilty.
She did not know how to break the news to me
without also breaking me apart.
For just a few months before that,
we were walking down Dong Khoi Street (the Rue Catinat, if you may),
taking pictures of the Opera House,
Givral Café, the Continental Hotel,
joking of how we acted like tourists.

Try being a tourist in your own city.
It means seeing everything with a fresh set of eyes,
trying to record everything,
trying to grasp the essence of everything
within a short amount of time.
I guarantee you it is fun.
And it will reinvigorate your love,
your understanding, your hope.

I was disappointed with some decisions others made.
Yet, being a city girl,
I was raised to adapt to them.
To learn that there will be thousands of other coffee shops
bookstores
landmarks
so many choices to overwhelm me
to drive me away from the time
when I had so few.

Will it eventually work? I do not know.
But that corner of the street (now demolished),
that corner of memory (now fading),
I was there.
Yes, I was there.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I wish
this reality could tweak a little
and turn into another.

Like, one in which we could actually fall in love
with each other.

Or better,
where we could be happy forever after.

That would be so nice and sweet.
If only I didn’t have to wish.

written 06 August 2010

what are these creatures of the night
that keep invading my dreams,
poking my ribs and neck,
throwing me back to our dark times,
of when we dyed our eyes
with memories of death?

you brought me a masterpiece,
then took it away from me.
how did I survive my resentment,
rage, and hopelessness?
how did I survive the loss
of your perfection?

we forgot, we forgot to change
the sadness at that moment –
the night when you saw me
purple and gray and empty
and I saw you blank like a page,
we lost each other in a heartbeat.

and we lost our masterpiece.
it could have outgrown us,
could have flown beyond our flesh,
and would have nothing to do with us.
it could have been on its faraway path
and, perhaps, would even be happy.

written 08 September 2010

Even when I am not thinking of you,
I am always thinking about you.
The shadow of the thought involving you
is enough to make me smile,
give me hope, let time slide
down the sides of my eyes
along with the most bitter of my tears
So what remains is no longer fear;
just a calmness I have never felt before
as I slowly set myself on an endless desire
Maybe you really are
my life.

Maybe I need nothing else
but a short moment of truth
masked with expectations
and prior experience.
Maybe you need nothing else
but a single audience
who can never demystify any of your tricks
Maybe all we need is a mutual feeling
or rather, the exact same wish.
What do I know if you never tell?
It is hard, so hard to believe
either of us deserves any of this
We finally see, with our own eyes,
what it is like to be seen
how it feels like to be held
where it hurts the most to be loved.

I doubt I truly feel any of this.

Maybe I’m just too full of shit
to actually know
how to return your love.
But I do not mind, and nor do I care,
when I am with you life seems utterly fair
and makes perfect sense
I would never have to ask
if you are feeling the same way I do.

Even if life stopped right here
I would not be so upset
for my only regret
would be just one:
I could never tell you before I die
how much you make me want to stay alive
in this world
this very world

For A.
who brought out the darkest in me
and perhaps I would never come back

written 09 November 2010

You’re always somewhere else.
I’m never here.
What is the chance of us ending up
together?

And yet it happened one autumn night
right upon our curious lips,
in between our intertwined fingers,
as the candle flickered to tell us
where we were. I forgot our spacetime
as you slowly broke opened
my heart. You found your way in
and for the first time I felt comfortable
being exposed, vulnerable, explored,
entered. Your growing presence became
more and more filling. I’d never known
I had so much emptiness.
It was my first time
feeling lonely no more
in the world.

Thank you for having brought
my lost little heart home
with yours.

 

What if you lost me to the other side of the Earth?
What if you were always the dark side of my heart?
We move in the same direction but we never meet
We only share mutual passion in our own heartbeats

What if you left everything behind
while I left everything forward?
Our shoulders touch and I turn away
Only to feel your hand guiding me back right under your face

What if you had left me die in my sleep?
You would stay alive, for me you would weep
One day someone else would come your way
You would reach for her hand and ask her to stay

It will be okay you say, it will be okay
For love to exist only in this fate
We wipe our tears to laugh out loud
Our misery is our eternal vow

We dance, fight, drag each other to the ground
The pain all over my body makes me aroused
As long as you are there I have someone to blame
We play the game of putting each other to shame

I am dead only because you are too
Look how much life we need to go through
Light another smoke, let this day burn out
Let me remember love the way I do now

I get it – the blues of voices blurred into a shared distance,
restless eyes upon the prize of recognition
never larger than their own.

It is not the first time I see swollen pride
but it makes me ashamed of myself
to see the mirrors of my species blinding one another.

If only could we drop it
and let us become true,
at least,
to ourselves.

true story

words work like this — your mind walks into their realm — you are surrounded, overwhelmed, lost, curious, intrigued, overjoyed, content, confused, furious, saddened, numb, calm, comfortable, found, perhaps lost again — indefinitely. you can never quite get back to where you once were, but you have never left either.

you take a word, quite casually, then realize it is not for you. it does not come close to describing how you feel and what you mean. you want to put it out, but the void is now a lot more disturbing because a word was once there. (indeed, it is a void only because of that word — the one you took so casually — or it would be just nothingness.) so now you are a lot more serious in your choosing, which scares most words away. those that are not afraid are invisible to your mind’s eyes. the only way to see them is to make yourself invisible as well, to let the you fall into the nothingness of the world before words. perhaps the right word will come to your rescue. just, perhaps.

no promise. words have never promised anybody anything. people make promises with words. words themselves hold no such notion. in fact they do not even hold those things called meanings. meanings are promises people make with words.

you need to express something that is quite universally called love. you think you know it. you think you feel it. you feel that you know it. you feel that you feel it. it is here, it is everywhere, it is you in every which way. you begin to question all your promises. you are not sure if thinkknowfeelyoume means anything. you are not sure what you are. you are not sure why you are not sure, what you are not sure about, and what sure means. oh, this… love thing. it strips away everything and yet it is everything, it is more than everything, it is larger than what words could hold, and so you are completely naked. you have no words for love. love is the only word. perhaps, just perhaps, in the realm of words, there is only one word. there is only…

                          love

medium