Sometimes when I remember abbajaan now, I don’t feel sad anymore. The air has left the balloon. The empty shape of grief. How time wears away the edges. Rubs raw the points we pierce our chest with. Every day I pray for God to take away the grief of […]
This tender, fierce heart, the end of all my beginnings, the beginnings of all my ends, how my love rages, rages, rages like wind upon the glass how it rattles in its cage and at dawn, such a tender bruised thing a murmur on the floor, I would do anything! […]
Once at the KTV we were singing and L had her camera and she came round and videoed us and Ai and I sang a song together and that was the night I thought I was getting sick but still we sang and then A sang that Taiwanese cowboy song […]
Once on a beach at the edge of the world near the small sea I had to cross to reach the island where the shells broke open my feet, I wrote your name and I didn’t look back to watch the shore wash it away. I never looked back.
So I know what it’s like. The searching. The wondering. The waiting. The walking through the streets. I know what it’s like. I was there. Running through those same streets. The face it breaks at the turn. The sitting on the floor. The trembling hands. The mindlessness. I know what […]
Sometimes as it happens in life you find yourself with two empty seats between you and a stranger in the middle row of an overnight flight. Now there is an unspoken rule about these miraculous empty two seats that are found next to each other on a full flight; each […]
I was so busy living,I did not seethe poinsettia flowershad emergedoutside my window, last winterthe tree was struggling;losing a battle towhite ants and blight,the leaves dried up,the stems turned hollow, gradually turning intoa monument todefeat (still, I took a spade to itand cleaned it out,applied medication,said a prayer) all winter […]
Once while reading of Nikolai’s dying in Tolstoy, I remembered my grandfather and my regret. And overcome by tears I could read no longer. My grandfather was a good man. Gentle and loved.
Once I was walking on the path in Hudson and I found a frozen pond. I went around to take photos, unaware yet of the story of the man who had drowned there one morning while swimming. In the distance a big black dog began to bark and run […]
Once JC and I left the airport and we didn’t realise there were not metros after 11 and we had to go back to the hotel after dropping Z and we both were worried. And we walked up and down the airport trying to figure it out and I thanked […]
