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Gone were the days when we were not confined to anything but each other. The irony of hiking the trail for healing is we are left more broken than when we started. We are elevated and expanded by our experiences, just as we are limited by them. And yet this realization alone is one of the many gifts of walking. Walking long and alone and bleeding and crying and receiving the grandest gift of it all.
2.
Let go of the urge to consolidate.
To put up a closure — to validate.
Excessiveness is Emptiness’ fool.
Committing one is ample — not two.
Too many colors, the paintings break.
Too much an explanation, the meaning evades.
Embrace and put on a brake, hold the line but allow for its grace.
For the truth will rise awake, through the noises in that negative space.
3.
Don’t whisper as the shoreline calls the sea. Gentle approaches, timid flings.
Never to settle, always to rewind. Ten thousand sands and the unwavering tides.
The clock of the ocean the two parties abide – For every promising hello, comes one more goodbye.
They say hope is a dangerous thing…Yet without it, deadness wins.
4.
Mystery is the grandest gift from mountains to human. Unattainable yet inviting, familiar yet foreign.
So is this approach just a dance, proximity and chance?
Or are we withheld information, till there’s no more flirtation?
Butterflies will fly and the pen will write.
When it does its thing, there’s only giving in.
5.
At 5 I held empty chip bags, scrapes of trash, used napkins in my hand; would not let go, oh that stubborn little girl, till she found that green trash can.
At 12 I held tiny secret notes in English exams. No more collecting colored bullets from narrowing alleys, and took what I wasn’t meant to have.
At 21 I held strangers’ bodies, conversations with addicts and gods, built castles and demolished them into ash. I held trekking poles, kneeled down on glaciers to fix shoe laces, where I dropped sweat and tears and oceans’ sands.
At 26 I held grudges, jealousies and fantasies – biology and Bible sessions alike. Held mini promises, shunned lingering glances, and burned bridges with no looking back.
For I cheated and was cheated on, in that game to become what I was not — and ultimately she grew into me. My twin and I now hold each other’s hands, standing on the familiar ground of pain, Are You Here she called, knowing I always am.
6.
A lighthouse craves rest
as mortals grave impact
Loneliness weighs down on legacy
and grandeur measured by chance
Yet moths rush towards the shimmering light
Like torrents rise to flood
None live to recognize the dying night
and beyond the chaos, a god.
7.
We know rain drops merge into an ocean
not how oceans feed into a drop.
One may pride himself of reason, of hatred properly seasoned
and two men, a mob.
The North Star faithfully shines
over every tree fall, every sandstorm, every trivial demise.
Yet on air we built temples, glorious engines of survival
till they crumble, falling of our own device.
8.
[Rejection Letter #7]
It doesn’t matter if you speak my language —
Imagery, mountains, or Chinese
It doesn’t matter how near you are
Two millimeters or two oceans apart
It doesn’t matter if you think I’m intimidating (At least 3 other guys shared your opinion)
It doesn’t matter if you eat millennial food
Avocados, kale and coconut
Someone’s mama once said, “If a guy likes the same sh*t you do,
doesn’t mean he’s the one for ya”
This I wholeheartedly agree
So let’s get our feet sore
run that mile or one more
And make a wish upon a satellite
dipping into an ocean out of sight (Or there’s other romantic things to do
based on a premise, similarly true
That we can only fall in love
upon our differences
and when not must
For that I’ll wait a little more
hell ya) ~
9.
Do we really have to go? Do we indeed need to settle? There’s always time, you know. There is never now or never. There’s time after death; there’s time in The River.
10.
We are June bugs trapped in the web of existence, waiting for a spider.
Will he save or eat us, and in what order?
Meager and miserable, we longed for change.
God or predator, we won’t revenge.
The spider retreated, shuddered by the wind.
I woefully sighed; next time, yet another, again.
11.
We were driving on a moonless night, with traffic on the other side.
A silly crush or a deadly crash, will you stare into the light —and with what price?
I steadied my hands and followed the lines, probing the void, satisfied.
For it is my art, duty, life, to swallow this relentless black tide.
12.
January has passed, and summer, and fall. What blossoms also dies —Indifference, Nature’s law.
It’s all the same game, with but a different name: Convenience begets conscientiousness, consumption nurtures compassion. Or does it go the other way, from infatuation to insatiation?
Passion’s tyranny: Love’s eulogy. But darlin, forget me gently.
Humor is hard to learn, and so is pity.
And, forgive my wrinkled heart—for when it loved—it loved.
13.
To find love is to regain the Center, to refuse the urge to be pushed towards an unhealthy extreme, to appreciate and learn about the Other that compliments and completes us…that delicate balance point between Libido/Thanatos, solar/lunar energies, and masculinity/femininity. “We can only fall in love/upon our differences/and when not must. “
14.
To be continued.
~诺娅