January 2011
1 post
2 tags
September 2010
5 posts
2 tags
Writing
is so hard. I cry now.
2 tags
The time I went alone to Santa Monica Pier
Feeling lonely and a little desperate after a fight over the phone with my boyfriend back home, I decided to drive to Santa Monica Pier. I brought my jacket and a book and I sat down on one of the benches on the sidewalk overlooking the colorless water. It was so cold that day that I didn’t feel like I was in California anymore.
My hands shivered as I turned the pages of my book and after several...
3 tags
Breakfast
Good morning. I can see the look of surprise on your face and I know that is because I am in the kitchen. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, darling. I’m not making breakfast or anything like that. Do you smell food? Do you see anything that resembles food? No? That’s not what I’m here for.
Yes, you’re still in charge of cooking. There’s no need to be overly dramatic about it, honey. You’ve been...
2 tags
Tito Alan
September 5, 2010.
I
What were you thinking that split-second before you pulled the trigger of your Walther PBK?
II
Your wife is in the living room. She’s crying, holding onto stacks of paper full of numbers you can’t seem to process. You sit beside her to tell her things are going to be okay. You’ll sell the car; you’ll find a way. She slaps you across the face and throws the papers at...
2 tags
The morning in which I thought about you
is just like every other morning. Except in this one, I was floating in my backyard pool pretending to be dead. I thought of happy things: being saps together under the moonlit sky, reading Stephen Dunn and Miranda July. Then, bad things: a shark circling under me, waiting for the perfect timing to swallow me whole. The water’s embrace turned into a slow, tender pull and I could feel my body...
August 2010
11 posts
2 tags
Constellations
Once, I had a neighbor named Leo. He was seventeen while I was fifteen. We would meet outside my house at seven in the evening almost everyday. His father worked in a bookstore and would occasionally bring him stuff home. Leo liked to show me these things. One night, it was a map. He asked me to bring a notebook, a pen, and a flashlight. We walked quietly to the park that was only a minute ...
3 tags
Loneliest
The world breeds billions and billions of people every year. Nobody should expect every single one to be happy. The number is always odd and therefore, someone always gets left out. Amidst a sea of happy hearts, one is sickly and tired and angry. Look at the city, look at those feet tirelessly wandering through the streets. Directions are uncertain, motives are insignificant. Mechanically walking...
3 tags
A few things
Things that confuse me: Math equations. Break ups of my favorite couples. Books I’m too dumb to understand. Fifteen minutes of fame. The scent of flowers. The existence of Mondays. Classical poetry. The smell of coffee at this hour — you’re unemployed. Your side of the bed is empty. Where are you?
Things that make me mad:
Faded friendships. Mean people. Uncomfortable shoes....
3 tags
Nothing
I. I walk faster than anyone I know. I’m not in a hurry. Just tired of life’s stillness and misery. I rush past kids by the street asking for some change or the cup of coffee in my hand, past troubled co-workers bellowing about meager salaries, past miserable employees handing out unwanted fliers on the newly erected condominium by the bay. I walk so fast, I can feel the wind slicing...
3 tags
Alone together, or Observations
We are sitting in this dark room. In a place that I’ve never been to before and might never go to again. We are listening to some guy’s poetry and I look at you. We smile as if we both know what the other is thinking. What if your smile meant, “This guy is great!” while mine meant, “What is this crap?”
He steps down after two poems and I celebrate quietly in my seat. Beside me, two...
2 tags
This and that
Stop — can you feel that? There is tremor in this room. Ever pleasant, ever true. With this in here and that in there, inches away from giving in. It is exhausting. And also, what would it take for me to get this and that together?
Romance, perhaps. But the only kind I know — one that is inspired by dead languages of dead people — no longer counts for much. Grand gestures are not...
2 tags
Awake
One of the hardest things I have to do each day is wake up. In my deepest slumber, I dream of boundless spaces. Then I fill in the emptiness.
—
There is a field. A bed of green. Look — I am standing alone at the center of it all. The color is so intense against the blue hues of the open sky. I make the clouds appear. And then some trees. It looks better, heaps better. But still....
4 tags
Foreigners
There are maps, then there are guide books. While I’d rather navigate my way through strange cities with the convenience of a GPS device, you, always the map guy, like doing things the manly way — simple for you, but ten times more complicated for me.
“Giant buddha? Where?” you ask the man cozily lounging on the hot pavement. Presumably a homeless old man who also may not...
4 tags
Lines
“These lines on my palm,” you said as you turned to face me. “They help me find my way back to you. Every time I stray, trust that I will go back to you.”
What do you say to that? How do you say that while you don’t necessarily believe him, you hope it’s the truth?
I shrug and smile. What an awkward moment between us. Lately, we’ve been finding ourselves...
1 tag
Missed Connections: Train
“Yours?”
A boy in a striped shirt and folded jeans asks as he holds up a strawberry-printed handkerchief. Which incidentally isn’t mine. But I linger on quietly, trying to get a good look at his face. I pretend I didn’t hear him. Stupid, I know. That’s just the way I am.
He smiles awkwardly, as if he just realized he’s been trying to talk to an idiot all...
4 tags
One night
What can I keep? The words that inspire, a fluttering madness?
The sound of hearts, pleading to be set free.
An image of a dark night under star-filled skies, hands intertwined, chests pounding along the beating of the drums.
On a bed of soft green, covered by a warmth that I cannot find words for.
This moment, fleeting but infinite, like your eyes onto mine.
5 tags
Missed connections: Cafe
Let me tell you about my days: They’re not interesting. I don’t go out that much and when I do, it’s just to read a book in my favorite cafe. I don’t like coffee and I never will, but I like the warmth of being in a quiet place that brews coffee nonstop, with people who seem to have fooled themselves that a $5 coffee is any better than the cheaper kind.
Sometimes, I watch...
July 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Sita.
I am Sita. A perfectly normal human being. Every single day, I wake up, wash my face, clean my mouth, cleanse my body, free my self from the dust and dirt of yesterday.
In the office, I sit and process meaningless words and numbers in my head, then I make my machine process them. I print them on hundreds of cut trees thoughtlessly. It’s work. I function like a more sensitive, more...
June 2010
2 posts
5 tags
Things I like about this guy I've never even met...
His profile picture which makes him look smart and also a bit dour, but not emo in any way.
What he wrote on his “About Me” section and his excellent choice of words.
His taste in music. It highly resembles mine.
His taste in movies.
His taste in books. Clearly, we’re a good match.
He’s an artist and a real one at that. Not just some phony point-and-shooter with pro...
2 tags
Boxes.
The first box is the hardest to look at. It is filled with music; with old records we found together, or we gave to each other; with cassette tapes, recordings of me, singing our favorite songs for you, and of you, playing your guitar for me; with mix tapes, songs weaved so delicately together to form a story, a general idea, an experience for road trips. You could very well say that it’s...
May 2010
1 post
3 tags
Last summer
Last summer, everyday, I sat across from you in the library where you used to go to read. Across from you, I stared and admired you. You didn’t know me then, and you still don’t know me now, but I loved you.
Through the covers of the books you read and the pile of books you took home each day, I got to know you. I listed almost all of them down and read them, treating each piece of...
April 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Well.
What do we do with lost loves? Lost friends, lost memories, lost time? We lose so much everyday without even knowing it—money, on overpriced coffee; time, waiting at the end of a long line to the lottery counter; love, while loving other people who refuse to even acknowledge our existence—and yet we go on living like this. Why? What is the point of it all? Are we hoping for a surprise...
3 tags
Fray
Looking at him now feels so eerily familiar. It’s been months since I last talked to him, much less saw him. Have I enough words in my vocabulary to even begin to describe just how much this moment—the touching of our hands, the clashing of our skin—breaks me? We were great once, weren’t we? I was hard-headed and foolish while he was calculated and patient. Yet those years...
3 tags
Tell me
“Tell me something new,” Lyla whispers on the receiver. She’s lying on her back, staring at her red ceiling. Her heart is beating fast, like it always does when she’s on the phone with him.
He, on the other end, sighs. “Well,” he says. He pauses for a minute and Lyla, impatient as ever, clears her throat. “Today, we went to the park to take pictures....
3 tags
Alice
Alice, a young girl with blue eyes and red hair, wakes up extra early one day and immediately turns her attention to her bookshelf. Even with the barely there sun casting its barely there rays, she can perfectly see that something is wrong here. Some of her books which she painstakingly arranges alphabetically and manages every single night before she goes to sleep, because she is...
3 tags
The List.
(In chronological order, the first one being the earliest.) * - my favorites + - for someone
Alice
Tell me
Fray *
Well.
Last summer
Boxes
Things I like about this guy I’ve never even met in person.
Sita
Missed Connections: Cafe *
One night * +
Missed Connections: Train
Lines
Foreigners *
Awake * +
This and that * +
Alone together, or Observations +
Nothing
A few things +
...