Nokyoung Xayasane

to love without question

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

to love without question
Nokyoung Xayasane

I was 26 years old
and my heart was
broken.

I visited Toronto
and took the subway
for the first time.
I met people
whose eyes
were filled with wonder,
whose minds
explored and questioned
and yearned to know,
to understand,
to educate,
to comfort.
And I thought, One day
I will live here
in this city.

Years later, I met you
and we moved here
to this city,
and we were happy.
I wanted
to keep writing,
and you wanted
to keep learning.

I took the metro again
as if I were a child
on a merry-go-round.

When we moved here,
it was wintertime,
and it was bitterly cold out.
One night, the ice hung
heavy on the eaves,
the roads were slick
and icicles decorated the trees
like early Christmas ornaments.
The power had gone out,
and we sat in the dark.
We lit candles and waited
and waited
and waited.
But nothing
for a very long time.
We decided to go to a friend’s house.
She still had some light.
She fed us vegan pad thai
and we were happy.

Some days,
when I was feeling blue
about work,
not finding work
or working too hard
at a few dead-end jobs,
you took me to the park.
We would sit under the trees,
or we threw a Frisbee
back and forth,
and I loved you
without question,
so sure of it all
at the time.

Sometimes,
we would fall asleep
on the couch
with our cat on top of us.
The weekends were lazy
and filled with sushi dates
and pizza parties,
friends would come by at night,
and we would talk
and we could laugh,
and I would know
what it was like
to love someone
without question.
I knew what it was like
to love someone without
pride or hesitation.

At night, I would feel
your body against mine,
and I would fall
asleep this way,
your breathing beside me,
calm and long,
and I would know
what it was like
to be loved
without question.

Then one day,
you were gone,
and those things were gone,
those things we shared,
they were gone from me.
I know the park is still there,
the Frisbee is around here
somewhere,
and our cat still sits at my window,
but you,
you’re not here
and you won’t be.

Sometimes,
I will speak your name aloud
before bedtime.
I will wish you a goodnight
wherever you are.
Sometimes,
I will dream about you
and you will hold me again,
and we are back
in our old apartment.
You are adjusting
your shirt in the mirror,
and I am sitting
at my vanity doing my makeup.

We are so happy
and we are loving each other
without question.

poetic justice

Posted on June 5, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

The Leprechaun
Nokyoung Xayasane

you cut your hair
short
and all respectable like,
you decided to go
to the doctor
for the first time
in years

and you felt the need
no
the perverse desire
no
the wide-eyed yearning
to mention her name
to me
in passing
out of the blue
without any context
all nonchalant
all casual like

you didn’t come home
one night,
and I didn’t see your face
for another few days

then you began
maneuvering
around my body
as if it were
an ill-placed
bureau
as if it were
an unwanted guest
who had called
on the wrong day

I hope you’ve learned
after all of this
that I’m not
an idiot

I hope we can be friends,
you say
I hope you find
your lucky charms,
you
little
Leprechaun

it’s the end
that sets the tone
for all
that has come
and gone

I hope
you’ve learned this,
you Leprechaun

if only
you weren’t
so foolish,
I said once

that cut you,
didn’t it?
that cut you
deep
right to the bone
now I wonder
who was the real fool

perhaps you and her
can chat it out
work it out
at the end
that is

my apologies
perhaps she can direct
your every thought
your every move
your every whim
because we both know
it takes someone
of character
to direct their own life

and yes, we all know
there’s nothing
she enjoys more
than the sound
of her own voice
authoritative, blunt,
and exhausting

she is shiny and bright,
is she not?
you’ll both stand
on your separate stages
and watch each other
from afar
waiting for the applause
of a thousand hands clapping
waiting for the sound
of a thousand voices praising

oh
and when she finally
breaks your heart
or you hers,
I’ll have
just two tiny words
for you

poetic justice

you
little
Leprechaun

and we will know no pain

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

you and I
Nokyoung Xayasane

If I had been
25
I would’ve fallen
in love
with you
straight away.

The wrecked boy
with a
tender heart.
He is lost
in this
big ole world.
His bark is
worse
than his
bite, as they say.

And the girl,
she was
always in love.
She was
always in love
with love.

She looked for love
in libraries
and in bookstores.
She lies in the grass
in the park,
a little bit
drunk.
Her skin eats
up the sun
and the air.

She tries to recall
a time
when she wasn’t always
saying goodbye
to the things and
to the people
she loved.
But she can’t
remember that time,
not at all.

It was a story
someone told her once
from long ago.
That love mattered.
Love lasted.
People never changed,
people never disappointed.
Those are fairy tales
she stopped believing
when she turned
6
years old.

So, you see,
it was inevitable
her
and
him,
you
and I.

Let’s sit on
a patio like
it’s the
first time and
the very last time.
Come with me, he’ll say.
And she will say,
Okay,
I will follow you.

Where should
we go, I wonder.
Anywhere, you say.
Everywhere, I say.
Okay, take my hand,
and I’ll take yours.
We’ll be fine,
just fine.

We’ll be like
the city lights,
bright and sleepless.
We’ll be like
the groggy
summer days,
a cold beer
in the park.
I’ll meet you
after your shift
as evening sky
seeps into morning,
and the drunks
make their way
home, battle worn
and weary.

We’ll walk the streets,
ragged and broken
and
young and reckless.
I’ll bend over
to tie my laces
and you’ll look
at the curve of
my body.
You’ll brush your
callused hands
along my face
and we will know
no pain.

We’ll be
beautiful
together
you
and I.
Just you wait
and see.

The morning sky
will open up
at last,
bright and clear
and endless
and true.
We’ll forget
that we were
ever lost
and that we
were ever broken.
Our laughter will
ring out in the sun.
I will hold your hand
in mine
and we will know
no pain.

you are the beginning and the ending

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

You
Nokyoung Xayasane

You are the beginning
and the ending.
It is like this:
with you I am
my worst self,
and I feel no shame.
You show me
the darkest part of you,
and I want to drown
in that darkness.

When I see you,
we exchange
very few words
because I know you.
I’ve known you
before memory
and before recollection.
You are
from another time,
a time when I was young
and sorrowful and sad.
You are a wellspring
of quietness and knowledge,
you wreck and destroy,
you hold and caress,
you rebuild and replenish.
You are the hard flat boulder
held up in the quiet stream
that I laid upon
one summer,
trying to find meaning in the sky.

You glide your thumb
along my lower lip,
you clench your hand
against my waist,
and I feel no pain.
The AC,
it has stopped working,
our bodies are drenched,
our hair is damp.
I clutch at it by the roots.
You are the dark purple bruises
along my thigh
my neck
my chin.
You are the dark damp place
where I go to hide.
You are the quiet calm after
rushing, rushing.

The thing is
I know you do not fear me.
And somehow
that is enough for me.
Somehow
you
are enough for me.
You are interspersed
among all the men
I’ve been seeing lately.
You know about them.
I do not lie to you.
I do not ask you questions
with sorrowful answers.

When you leave,
I try to forget you.
And in that act,
I remember you
more vividly,
panoramic and bright.
In truth,
I do not wish
to erase your smell,
your sweat,
the imprint of your hands
from my hair
my face
or from my body.

You are the beginning.
Will you be the ending?
One can never know
these things.
One can only hope.
Hope, I believe,
is all we have.

from the men who used to love me

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

The actress
Nokyoung Xayasane

In a city of millions
you decided to date
my ex-boyfriend.
I guess
that’s to be expected
from an actress,
criminal lawyer,
playwright.

So you caught the
Leprechaun and all his
lucky charms?
You started seeing
each other in
September?
He’s right on schedule.

He waited a solid
two weeks
before moving on?
He’s right on schedule.

You two weren’t
exclusive and official
until October?
He’s right on schedule.

You went on vacation
nine months later?
He’s right on schedule.

I hope you know
that before the
relationship
is over,
he’ll already have his eye
on someone new.
He doesn’t know
how to be alone.
His mistake.

Maybe I shouldn’t have
marketed
him so well.
My mistake, friend.
He’s good
but not great.
I’m sure you’ll
find that out
eventually
in your own time,
which I can only
assume will be
within the year.
Your mistake.

I’ll make sure I don’t
advertise my
next partner
so openly
just in case
you needed
more validation
from the men
who used
to love me.

The Girl Who Was Thursday Night

Posted on May 21, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

The Girl Who Was Thursday Night
Nokyoung Xayasane

There was a girl
who was Thursday night.
She would walk down the street,
and men would call out to her.
They would look at her
with an unquenchable need,
a thirst, and a hunger.
She would smile and their
world would expand.
She would turn away
and their bodies
crumpled to the floor.
She would speak
and they would hang
on her every word,
her every syllable.
She would pause,
and their mouths
would gape open.
She would wait a
second longer
and then continue.
They would
inhale sharply.
They would
stumble and bumble,
they would trip and fall,
and swallow hard.

She could stand at the corner
of a crosswalk and feel
a pressure against her sleeve,
a hand on her arm,
and she would know
before turning,
that she would be
looking into
the face of yearning,
she would be staring into
human weakness.

When this girl is sick
with a little cold,
men will offer to bring her
chicken noodle soup
straight to her door.
She will get three such offers
and ignore them all,
not out of cruelty
but out of pity,
but still there will be
someone at the door
holding cups and cups
of chicken noodle soup.
She has learned
that the soup is for them,
and not for her.

The girl who was Thursday night
has a lot to choose from
and yet
there is no one to choose from.
When they touch her
she is already disappearing,
she is already gone.
When they want to hold her,
she will allow it.
She will breathe easily,
she will breathe them in,
calm and languid,
trying to remember
the feel of their skin,
their need to connect,
to belong, to feel valued,
coddled and praised,
reprimanded and shunned,
and she will give it to them,
she will give them these things,
she will give them
these things,
at least and easily.

She will hold
the memory of them
as an explorer who has
already said her farewells.
She will lie with them
in the night,
in the morning,
in the late afternoon.
It takes nothing
away from her.
She feels no shame,
she feels no lasting sorrow.

The girl who was Thursday night
will live on
in the imagination
of the painter,
a sketch against a screen, a caricature,
the actor,
a dark monologue on an empty stage,
hollow and bleak,
the writer,
a paragraph of prose, prophetic and wise,
the musician,
a lyric that hangs in the air,
eternal and bright.
They see her
as they want to see her.
She gives them something,
she fills a need
for a brief and beautiful time.
And her own need is filled,
a need to slake her new appetite.
She is ravenous now
for that first
easy
thrill.

And every day
is different for her.
Her mind opens up
fresh and alive.
The sparrows outside
call to her with their song,
the May sunshine
beckons,
the afternoon winds
surround her.
She is free
and the things and the people
of the past,
they are that,
the past,
they are already vanishing,
they will soon be gone.
She longs for them
like her childhood playground
like when she paddled along
in a canoe on a lake
and felt the open air
and the call of the wild geese
sheer and bright and alive,
like the soft comfort
of an old blanket
that cradled her to sleep,
but those things,
those people,
they don’t belong to today.
They only belong
to those nights from long ago,
they belong
to Thursday night.

who we hope to be

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

who we hope to be
Nokyoung Xayasane

what we have
and what we know
is this
there are moments when
everything is clear
when time is slowed
between every second
is an eternity

we glimpse it
sometimes
those moments of clarity
walking down Queen St W
the rush of wind
and open sky
there is movement and silence
anonymity and infamy in the streets

we are free here
moving
free as we’ll ever be
freer than we’ll ever be again

what we once held dear
love, security, comfort
those are all illusions

nothing lasts
nothing remains
except for the persistent
buzzing of silence
punctuated
by the cry of ecstasy
the heaving of bodies
giving in
the carnal nature of who we are
vapid and cruel and weak
and who we hope to be
strong and beautiful and pure

to keep from drowning

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

Caravaggio
Nokyoung Xayasane

It’s not hard to see
nor difficult
to predict
that we would be here
in this room
on this night
again,
and again,
and again,
and again.

I can still feel
your fingers,
the arch
of your thumb,
the soft giving
of your palm.

I’ll brush my hand
along your back,
its smooth
unexplored terrain.

I’ll rest my head
on the dampness of
your chest,
a heaving that calms
and then
heaves again.

In the room,
there are only
two bodies.
In this space,
there are
no
questions.

When I hear
your voice
my body
vanishes,
it falls away.
My body,
it returns again,
new and magnified.
My skin,
it becomes
a fragile sheath
that slips
to the floor
effortlessly.

When I feel
the pressure
of your
open mouth,
its sharpness
steady
against my lip,
I know,
my body,
it belongs to you,
it obeys
your commands,
it understands
and it questions,
it anticipates,
and it gives in,
my body,
it gives over.

There is
a purity
to the brutality.
There is a holiness
in the defilement.
You are a raw
untethered wire
ripping through
the air,
electric,
sparking,
alive.
I am
a jumble
of unconnected
thoughts
veering off-course,
trying to keep
from drowning.

And then
there is a quietness
in the room.
There are
a multitude
of breaths,
calm
and steady,
long
and pure.
There is
your body
elongated
against the sheets.
There is my
fragility
lying next to you.
Along
my body
you have left
your marks
seen and unseen.

We hold
each other
close
to prevent
ourselves
from
going
under.

always, I am a river rushing

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

counter culture
Nokyoung Xayasane

Inside,
I am a river raging.

They tell me,
It’s a man’s world.
They say,
We live in an age
of white privilege,
rape culture,
slut shaming,
ethnic profiling.

Sometimes
I want to go
back there,
leave Toronto
and return
to the punks
of Kitchener-Waterloo.

That subculture,
that counter culture,
those punks
of KW,
they hail from families
of doctors,
lawyers,
clergymen,
teachers.
They have
summer homes
in cottage country.
In the warm season,
they bask
in the rivers and lakes.

What do they
know about injustice?
They went
to a protest once.
They read
some articles.
They dated
an Asian girl,
a black girl,
a brown girl.
They abstain
from drugs and drink.
Straight-edge, etc.
They go on juice
cleanses.
They
don’t eat meat
or any animal by-products.
Vegan, etc.
They brew
their own
beer,
coffee,
tea.
The pour-over method,
handicrafts,
double belts,
tattoos
ironic and true.

Counter culture?
Everyone
they speak to,
sleep with,
play with,
speaks
the same language,
has the same
white skin,
They shame stereotypes,
but live them fully,
reveling and rebelling
in their
middle-class lives.
Some of them
smoke a little weed,
some a lot.
They debate on
philosophy, politics,
and all around the
circle, they nod
and confirm what
the other believes,
loving the sound
of their own voices
ringing out
clear and strong
and knowledgeable.

So you play in a punk band?
What do you know
about injustice?
So you’re drawn
to the marginalized,
the visible minority.
What do you know
about injustice?

You’re a male feminist?
You dated someone
of colour?
How radical.
The next time
you feel the need to
mansplain,
don’t.
I know my body’s rights.
I know what the world
expects from me.
I’ll keep mum
and look oh so pretty.
I’ll play the cute vixen librarian
you all want to fuck.
I’ll wear my summer dress
and Converse shoes,
my oversized glasses.
Those punks,
they speak
so freely
and openly.
They know
no other way to be.
They tell me,
It’s a man’s world
after all.

You think you know
about injustice
because your
grandmother tied
herself to a tree,
because your uncle
declaimed the man.
Try escaping
from a place
of blood and war,
try running in the
forest from the sound
of bombs falling,
measuring your distance
from the noise
so you’re in the middle
of the projectile’s arch.
Try hiding a soldier
in your home
as militants interrogate
your family.
Try being raped at
sixteen by your suitor
and have this be
the everyday.
Try being jailed
and escaping
in a canoe
while the sound
of bullets
ricochets
through the pitch night.
Try giving birth
on a dirt floor.
What do you know
about injustice?

Don’t speak to me
about your counter culture.
Try raising a family
of immigrants, refugees
who speak not
a stitch of English.
Try sitting down
at a table with the
family friend
who sexually assaulted
you at 12 years old,
whose wedding
your parents attended
a year after banning
him from your home.
Hush.
No one
shall speak
of this
again.
We must
protect
our fragile
community.
One mere girl
will not destroy us.

Always,
always
I am
a river rushing,
rushing.

lost and never found

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Nokyoung Xayasane

my library
Nokyoung Xayasane

I can name all the men
on my one hand
who’ve given me books
as gifts
and then
there’s you
you lost
the one book
I lent to you
my favourite book
I don’t think we’ll
ever find it

some things
are like this
lost
and never found

when I asked you
to pick me up
after my surgery
you told me
you would be busy
that day

when I needed help
building a large
wardrobe
to house my clothing
because all of your shit
took up our tiny closet
you abandoned me
to go play with your friends

you came home that night
drunk
at 4 in the morning
and you woke up
at 2pm
a few hours before
my book launch
I had to drive
both of us
an hour and a half
out of the city
while you held a
plastic bag
filled
with your own vomit

as I stood
in front of the crowd
of people
my friends
my family
who were there
to hear me read
you
had sequestered yourself
in our car

as I read aloud
I looked at the door
waiting for you
waiting for you
waiting for you
to show up
for me
to be there
for me
as I
have always
shown up
for you
as I
have always
been there
for you
but I stood up there
alone
and I am still standing there today

I really hope
I get that book back
but we both know
there will be more men
who will fill
my new library
I just hope
you haven’t given
that book to someone else
but we both know
you probably
definitely
have

some things
are like this
lost
and gratefully
left behind

Bird of Passage