here

Here, in my repository of unlived things

Lay visions and dreams that have yet to breathe

For the soul is a place of holding, release

All that is and has yet to be

I write not for approval, not for the hope of affirmation that my words carry weight or any meaning. Rather, I write for the simple joy it brings; for the clarity is bestows upon a clouded heart, a confused mind.

Tonight has been good, good for my spirit, for my soul. I’m thankful for the realization that I have, in fact, been dishonest with myself. Sometimes it takes loneliness and then a friend to evoke the feelings that lay in these bones. But I have been lying to myself. I am not okay with this mere act of breathing, living life with so much unknowing. I thought I found peace in settling here (and I did, for a brief moment) only to find that I am restless and yearn for so, so much more. I can’t help but admonish myself for my own thoughts. Stupid. I feel like I have been so stupid. Of course, I want more! Of course, I need to be free, not confined to an image or idea that I will be happy if I do this or if I hold onto that responsibility. 

The fireflies tonight were phenomenal. Driving through twisted back roads and fields of countryside I saw a million little lights, a million small reminders of beauty. Even though these tiny illuminations were fleeting they are so existent and so very much alive.

The other night I rode my bike in and through the dark, back home from the city and it was the most peace I had felt all day. In solitude, in revelry of stars lighting the black, oil sky, I could breathe again.

We live by night

To see the stars

To grasp the dark

And claim what’s ours

And now, looking back at these short verses I wrote that night I want to change “grasp” to “embrace”. A grasp is so momentary, so sure of the promise of letting go. An embrace seems so much more lasting, even if it ends. In time there comes an ending and it comes to all things. I want to know where my beginnings are but I have been learning so much about endings, about losses and how, I do need to grieve them and allow them to be for what they are. And I am in a beautiful place, an uncharted yet safe place to live freely, courageously and without reserve.

I am guided by a Light, maybe even a Pillar, and a Wandering Cloud.

LA Public Library, 2011. I'll be here so very soon. 

of loss and surrender

yet i, being weak, still hold fast to all that must be let go
loosen this grasp that holds too tightly to what is worth losing
for to see you i must stop searching
to feel you i must start surrendering

i am stuck somewhere inside myself.

Xia Xi, Yunnan, China (January 2013)

grandma

A poem I wrote about my grandmother a couple years ago when the theme of family in Vietnam kept appearing and reappearing in writing. I added more to it just a couple days ago:

Ba noi

I remember when

you would feed me avocados

and rub my back when the pain

was too much to bear

I miss the nights when

you would sit up in your bed

and breathe prayers that were quiet

but I could still hear you

through the boards and

paper thin walls of the house

I still think of the evening

when you wouldn't sleep

because upon my pilgrimage to your home

for the first time, your grandchildren

sat together under the same roof

even after years of unknowing

years of the absence of love

and existence of kin

Upon my leaving

we sat together in the living room

you, me, and the entire village

and I wept

for love could not have radiated

any more than when we prayed

on a grey, rainy afternoon

And though you slept

the night that would be your last

not knowing it would be an endless sleep

the stroke may have taken your body

silently, quietly in slumber

yet it never took your soul