heartache

Things Left Unsaid

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Things Left Unsaid
Nokyoung Xayasane

If she were honest with herself, it hadn’t turned out how she hoped it would. Her expectations had gotten the better of her. 

Sam stood leaning against the kitchen counter. She had thrown the pregnancy test into the trash before Eric got home from class. There had been a part of her that had hoped the test would be positive and another part of her, a larger more looming part, that prayed the opposite. She was no longer a religious person but praying seemed to be the best route. Please, she had prayed. I’m not ready. Maybe someday but not today.

If the test had been positive she knows her mom would be happy. Mai would be a grandmother like many of her friends whose kids hadn’t kept going on and on with more and more schooling. What’s with all the schooling, she’d say. What is it you’re learning exactly? 

The owl eyes of her teapot and cups stared back at her. The sink was empty of dishes but she had to get used to not having a dishwasher. Washing the dishes was like taking a shower—her thoughts wandered and vaulted here and there as the soap suds dispersed. Shower thoughts. Dishwashing thoughts. 

“Everything good?” Eric asked her while he held the refrigerator door open, scanning the contents for an after-class snack. Sam was still slightly amazed and annoyed at how quickly Eric had lost weight ever since he decided to cut out beer and processed meat from his diet. He shed the pounds like it was nothing. A preening heron on the edge of the water, regal and distant. 

He had come from a divorced home where his mom, an eccentric novelist, filled his plates with her latest concoctions of gluten-free, cauliflower-crust pizzas and meatless nuggets. He seemed to have gained weight in an act of rebellion. But now that he wasn’t under her iron apron, rebelling through food wasn’t as high a priority. 

Eric had lived with his mom and his aunt Celeste, a professional volunteer. She hadn’t been paid for any of her work, but she loved giving of her time as a museum guide or food tour guide. She also volunteered at the homeless shelter. Sam refrained from correcting her and saying “unhoused.” It was around the time of Eleanor’s first swipe at a novel that she adopted a cat and named him Kevin. Subsequently, John, Alfred, and Pam followed. Sam found the human names endearing, but still got confused when Eleanor would talk about Pam’s latest poop or Kevin’s finicky eating habits. They were Eric’s siblings. Round, rotund, purring.

“Yeah, I’m good. How was class?”

“Like every other day. I hardly talk to anyone. It feels like I only use my voice when I get home.”

The thing that had drawn Sam to Eric was their conversations. He would play devil’s advocate and it would get her all worked up. How could he defend bestiality? Easily. He spoke in a reasonable tone, hardly ever raised his voice, and listened, really listened. He never reacted. It was a dance, a collaboration of thoughts and ideas. She fell in love, not with his ideas, but how he presented them. She could put their conversations on mute and just watch his hands and face, extrapolating, reaching, and then finding solid ground. To not be able to do that everyday must really bother him.

“You haven’t made any friends?”

“No, not really.”

Eric was the kind of person who made his friends in grade school and just stuck with those same people. Ever since they had moved to Toronto, he would visit them as often as he could over the weekends. It was as if his real life were back with them and this life with her was a interlude until he could be with them again.

“Speaking of chatting: I had coffee with Padma today.”

“Oh, nice. How’s she doing?”

“She’s good. She talks a mile a minute. She seems like she has all these thoughts rolling around in her head and she needs to get them out as soon as possible. I find her kind of intimidating. I feel like I need to take a nap to recover.”

Eric smiled. 

Padma lived close to them on St Clair and Bathurst. Eric and Sam had chosen St Clair and Dufferin because his friend from Kitchener had moved to Toronto before them and lived close by. His friends were still a signpost for him even in apartment hunting. Padma was also from Kitchener, a university friend of Sam’s. Someone highly intelligent and heavily involved in politics and the social sphere. If there was a left-leaning protest, Padma was there. Sam found her passion energizing and then eventually exhausting. Sam preferred quiet activities like poetry readings and conversations in dimly lit rooms. She was a writer herself. A poet. Not something most people would understand given all the science courses she had taken throughout her schooling. But words drew her in. If there was a stanza that rang true and painful, she was there. It was a door opening. She held her breath and walked through.

“I was wondering. You wouldn’t mind if I had a chat with her, would you?”

Eric had been thinking lately about going to law school even though he was currently enrolled in lab tech courses at York University. That was also a reason why they lived at Dufferin and St Clair. 

“No, of course not. I think she’ll be able to answer a lot of your questions. Give you a better idea of what being a lawyer’s actually like.”

Padma’s career as a criminal defense lawyer kept her busy. In all seriousness, Sam couldn’t see Eric as a lawyer. He was more of a collaborator, artistic. From what Padma had said about her work, it seemed like it was every lawyer for themselves.

“Yeah, I think so, too.” He paused. “You sure you’re okay?”

Sam smiled. “Yeah, just tired.”

“Right. You need a nap to recover.”

“The introvert’s life.”

For some reason, years later Sam remembers how she talked about Padma that day. She had said Padma had intimidated her. In her eyes, it made her sound weak and fragile. In a position of disadvantage, in a state of admiration, almost. She wonders how Eric remembers it. Perhaps he took note of it silently, unconsciously. Perhaps it allowed them to stand beside each other and be compared without his knowledge or theirs.

There was a time, Sam thinks, when they were happy. It wasn’t as if they were unhappy—just kind of settled, in a certain routine. Eric got bored easily which may explain why they had moved three times in the last three years, almost every year, and for some reason, usually during the winter months, the worst time to move. But he always had help from his friends and bandmates. Being in a band was as if you belonged to a club whose members belonged to a larger club of other musicians. It was kind of like the nod that bikers give each other as they ride by or runners who raise their hand in greeting to another runner in passing.

“I don’t really think about it,” Eric said. Sam tries to remember what she had asked him. It was something along the lines of, “Do you ever think about tomorrow?” Or something less flowery and more pragmatic. 

“I don’t really think about it.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.” She had said this softly and in a non-accusing tone. She had never brought up the pregnancy test to him. Eric, who never really thought about tomorrow. Except when it came to potentially becoming a lawyer? Perhaps that was only a glitch that can be seen from a distance when time has passed. A character oversight that only makes sense later on.

Eric had been the first to move out. He had found a place quickly and with two friends she had never heard of before. She was staying until the end of their lease. Two weeks in the empty apartment and then she was moving uptown to Yonge and Eglinton with her university friend Candace.

But until he had found a place, they lived together for two weeks after deciding to end it. Sam was in a state of mourning and they were both in denial. They acted as if nothing had happened. They were bidding their time and wanted to staunch the wound before it bled out. And the best way to do that was to pretend like they were still together. At first they had tried not touching each other, even in passing between the kitchen and living room, but that seemed strange. They made a decision to act normal, whatever that meant. It was a form of self-preservation. A form of self-inflicted insanity. 

They went to the movies together. It was an outdoor film festival at Christie Pits. Sam looked at the screen. Moving figures and ricocheting sounds bouncing off the nearby houses and buildings. A dark world lit up by one small screen. Lives were unfolding with cinematic precision, one cut moving on to the next, self-assured and self-propelling. The score rising and falling, now hushed, barely a whisper, hardly a sound. She looked around her and saw the blue light of the film reflecting off people’s faces. Eric looked up and away, mesmerized. She reached her hand out and grabbed onto nothing, just empty air.

What do I do with all this love I have for you?

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

What do I do with all this love I have for you?
Nokyoung Xayasane

You’re standing in front of an open window, billowing curtains. The winter sun shining in and you turned to me, your back against the light. Stained glass window. Your back against the light. Reds and oranges and yellows and blues and greens, playing across the curtains and your face.

That evening, early morning actually, I awoke and found the indentation of your body in the bed beside me. For a moment I felt fear, a pinprick straight to the heart.

I found you standing beside the window again, the darkness before the rising sun, a dim world encased in the quiet pre-dawn sky. I was relieved to see you standing there, still there. I stood beside you and you turned to me.

“You can’t stop thinking about her.”

“I wish I could, but I can’t.” 

We’re no longer hiding from each other, we’re beyond that. I’m relieved to see you still here; I thought maybe the worst had happened—that you had done the worst to yourself. I can’t help myself and reach out for your hand to make sure you’re still there, alive and breathing, short tortured breaths like a wounded animal.

“You love her.”

“I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

You have so many wishes right now. Wishing you didn’t, wishing you could. A world of wishes. I’m still riding the wave of relief to see you safely beside me, my pain at the fringes of it, the foam of pain on this wave of relief, keeping me afloat.

“You want to be with her.”

“Yes,” you say simply. No more wishes—just a statement of fact. 

“What do I do with all this love I have for you?” I ask you.

“I’m sorry,” you say. The dark sky behind you. Your back against the darkness.

“You should leave before she wakes up.” Our daughter asleep in the other room. “If you don’t do it now, you’ll never do it.”

“I’m sorry,” you say again.

I see you now, walking away from the window, away from the house, down the road to our car, the headlights streak across the road. The headlights turn, casting beams of long light and then you’re gone. 

What do I do with all this love I have for you? I write these words to you across space and time, making my way back to you. I love you. Nothing and no one has changed that. 

You in technicolour, the white of the curtains, and moving shapes of colour across your face. 

Late Afternoons on Air

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Late Afternoons on Air
Nokyoung Xayasane

Here she was, waiting for him. She tried to see herself as others would. A woman, sitting at the bar, nursing a mocktail enhanced by an egg-white substitute. The bartender said it was made of peas, a vegan alternative. The vegan part didn’t do that much for her but she wanted to taste something different, a different texture, whilst drinking her slightly less expensive mocktail—some type of texture or flavour, something, anything.

She had arrived an hour late because of transit and yet he still wasn’t here yet. Traffic, he had said in his text. It made her feel better that she hadn’t been on time, waiting here for him, the minutes ticking away until an hour had passed by. She too was living her own life, busy enough and not-well-planned enough, to be a full hour late, and yet he had surpassed her here, still. 

It was a trait he had. Did he swoop in and out? Or was that how she saw him? What are our ideas of people but mere fabrications, small slivers of who they really are, snapshots in time, solidified in glass, unchanging, unwavering even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

She sipped on her vegan mocktail and imagined sipping on warm tea brewed in his mom’s kitchen, from his mom’s teapot.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “I can’t find the teapot.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “If I were a teapot where would I be?”

“It’s not in the kitchen,” he said.

She thought for a moment. And then made her way to his mom’s bedroom. She grabbed the teapot from her bedside table. “Found it!”

She smiled. She had been so young. And now, a middle-aged woman with fleeting, moored memories from 16 years ago. Tea was the precursor before their podcast recording sessions. Edwin had come up with it for their university’s literary magazine. Co-hosts before everyone and their cousin had a podcast. At the time, it was new to her, almost nerdy, an old world, voices drifting on the air, unattached to bodies, ethereal. Little did she know, ephemeral would’ve been a better way to describe it. Short-lived, fleeting. But never gone.

They brewed the tea and brought it downstairs to the basement, into a room with a glassed door. His podcast station. She had never really participated in collaborative creative projects before. She was a poet who wrote solely on her own, for herself. Having someone read or hear her work seemed unimaginable, yet here she was, in their first podcast session, about to record her own voice. 

She smiles now at the way he helped her feel at ease like a good director would—just natural conversation to take her mind off the recording. You felt at ease in his presence, safe. He was the teacher at school who believed in you despite what everyone else thought. He saw you.

One time he had said she was rare.

“If there was a graph that represented people,” he said. “There would be a cluster here in the lower left half. That’s everyone. And one lone dot in the upper right. All by itself. That’s you.”

She had scrunched up her face, unable to believe but wanting to, wanting to believe.

“An outlier,” he said. “You’re an outlier.”

Someone calling her rare. Well, you could say that was the beginning, and she hadn’t even known. Like she said, she was young, she hardly knew anything about life.

After the recording session, they went into the basement living space, past his bedroom. Light from the late afternoon filled the room, long bands of orange lasering their way to the brown couch. She doesn’t remember why or how but he sat on the couch and she on the floor, probably she felt comfortable there. And she rested her head on her arms which lay across the couch. She sat almost at his feet. The imagery. She chuckles now. What did they talk about? It seemed—everything. He was someone who was curious about everything, but mostly the arts and philosophy. An academic, really. Who wanted to remain in the ivory tower. Although this would change soon enough. 

He would record his session later, and after their tea break, they would record the intro and outro. Later on, she would listen to that first podcast, over and over again. Her voice heavy with emotion as she read her poem. Their intro and outro, alive, like live wire. She felt like she needed to walk around her neighbourhood after that first listen, her voice on air, his voice on air, late afternoons on air. 

Whatever happened to them afterwards, they existed there, frozen in time, floating on sound, wavelengths encased in time, unchanging, the beginning of something. They were on the verge of something. What it was she couldn’t name. But she felt it. 

The door to the bar opened. The light of the late afternoon streamed in, bands of light across the mahogany of the bar.

He stepped in and scanned the room for her. An hour late. He raised his arms into the air, wingspan like a great bird, the initial movements before a great embrace—a gesture she loved. His smile, open mouthed and unabashed. She basked in his warm glow. She was sitting at his feet in his mom’s basement. “Something’s never change,” she whispered.

“What?” he asked, his arms still outstretched.

She walked towards him and entered his embrace, engulfed in his embrace. “Nothing,” she said.

and we will know no pain

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

evening_train

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.

but we kept dancing anyways

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

I_am_not_beautiful

This will always last for us,
Nokyoung Xayasane

So much
was happening.
Did we even know?
We did.
But we kept dancing
anyways.
We just kept
dancing anyways.

And I thought,
we will never be
this young
and this beautiful
and this free
again.

So we just kept
dancing.
We just kept
dancing
anyways.

This will
always last for us,
I said
but
I didn’t believe it.

Nothing lasts.

So I just kept
dancing.
I just kept
dancing
anyways.

The music,
it stopped.
I ran
to catch
the 1:30 train,
and I thought,
This will
always last for us,
but
I didn’t believe it.

Nothing lasts.

So I just kept
dancing.
I just kept
dancing
anyways.

And I remembered
you were dancing
you were dancing, too.

You too
were
courageous.

And we kept
dancing.
We just kept
dancing anyways.

that expands and is everywhere

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

that expands and is everywhere

The Morning After
Nokyoung Xayasane

The light holds here
                        through the silken drapes
            hanging on your walls
            that separate
our murmured voices
from the outside world
 
I hold this memory
           like a   grain     of sand
                        encapsulated in time
                                    on the brink of            
                                                          falling
            through the overturned hourglass
 
The white sheets
                      still hold the brilliance
            of the night
 
Our laughter
                        effortlessly weaving
            a pattern on the ceiling
                        an open window
                                    letting in the evening air
 
Your books                on the mantel
                       ease me into
            the hollow
of your neck
the curve of my spine
           the small
                      of your back
 
Scattered        on the floor
                                 my blouse
                                            your jacket
 
Coming together
                                in the hours before
          filtered light enters
through curtained glass
that expands and is everywhere
 
           the warmth of the sun
                                    on silken drapes.

(September 2010)

You will look lit from within, and lit from without

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

My not-so-secret garden

My not-so-secret garden

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Dear Ava,

I’ve been thinking about you lately. I remember sitting across from you at the diner, and you were full of questions for me. You were confused. You were unsure of what to do next. You didn’t know if you should stay with him or if you should leave. You looked at me with your large, lost, wide eyes. I could see an earnestness in you. You wanted to do the right thing, but you didn’t know where to start; you didn’t know where to begin.

Here’s what I want to tell you.

If you decide to take this path, to leave him, and to go out into the world on your own, it will be very, very difficult.

But the thing you will learn is that the difficult part is not making the change or of ending things. The difficult part is what happens afterwards. I’m not going to lie to you. It will be painful. Excruciatingly so. You will have memories of how you used to be together, like how he ate his pasta, or how he sometimes cocked his head to the side when he listened to you speak. You’ll remember those unassuming moments when you stood in front of the bathroom mirror and he placed his hand on the small of your back. There will come a time when you stand in front of that same mirror and you’ll remember the touch of his hand and you’ll feel the absence of it, and it will batter you open; it will batter you wide open. But it will not destroy you.

I want you to remember this.

You have friends and family who you can talk to you. They’ll take you out for dinner, laugh and cry with you; you will feel loved. Sometimes people will do the smallest thing like save you the last bit of honey for your tea, and you will feel your heart fill. Sometimes it will be almost more than you can possibly bear. But you will bear it. Just those pure simple acts of kindness from people — it will batter you open.

And sometimes when you go for walks, the sky will light up with a light so harsh at times and so beautiful, and the wind will pick up, people will walk by laughing and talking and you will be so far away from them but so close to them at the same, you will feel as if you are part of everything. It will be painful. It will hurt so much. Your heart will ache and ache.

Maybe you’ll see a small sign at the edge of a park that reads “nature trail.” You’ll walk past it, and the entrance will dip into an almost surreal world. You will walk these intertwining paths almost every day. Perhaps there will be a babbling stream, shallow water and rocks, a wooden bridge, and endless leaves of yellows and reds will pirouette from the sky. Perhaps the ground will be blanketed with autumn leaves and foliage that crunch beneath your boots. It will be your not-so-secret garden.

You may even look out over an expanse of trees, or you may be sheltered within a canopy and the light, the light, will come streaming down, and you will feel breathless, alive; you will feel time moving; you will feel the movement of time and how random and passing and fleeting and beautiful it all is; and your heart will ache; it will just ache and ache.

But then gradually, without you noticing it, the pain will lessen. The memory of his hand on the small of your back will not rip you open. The song that played while you cooked pasta together will not make you ripe with pain; it will not double you over. You’ll remember how sometimes he would say your name aloud and the sound would make you stop short. You’ll remember the look he gave you of reprimand and of kindness. His compassion would have floored you. That memory, that look, that single word — your name spoken aloud by someone who loved you — it will no longer batter you open.

Soon you will feel a lightness. The memories will reoccur less often. The dreams will wane. You will wake less often in the night; you will stop seeking solace in other people. You will not drink so much. One day, you will feel fine. Just fine. And the initial lightness will stretch; it will stretch into hours. Then into days, then into weeks. Then months, then years. And when you’ve finally learned to be alone, when you finally enjoy your own company and you wouldn’t have it any other way, you’ll meet someone new. And that person will make you laugh again. He will make you laugh until you cry. He will make your skin feel as if it were made of tissue paper. Transparent and open and light. Whatever was hiding deep inside of you will rise to the surface. You will look lit from within, and lit from without. That’s what love will do to you; it will transform you. You will be beauty intensified.

And all that has passed will seem like an apparition; it all will seem like a story you concocted, a story you told yourself to help you fall asleep. And you will be happy, you will be so utterly happy.

I send you all my love as always. And all my hope.

Your friend,
Nok

I am not beautiful

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

I_am_not_beautiful

With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler
(Lines Depicting Simple Happiness, Peter Gizz)

I am not beautiful
Nokyoung Xayasane

When you told me
you were fucking her,
I felt nothing.

Not much has changed
since you left.
I still wake up in the morning
and make my coffee.
I still laugh with friends in cafes.
I still find beauty in the pink light
punching out from between
condos and high rises.
I flick the light switches
on and off
to watch the shadows
emerge and disappear.
On New Year’s Eve I kissed a girl,
and it was fine.
All weekend, I fucked a stranger.
I drank all night
and threw up in my wastebasket.
I feel nothing.
I feel everything.

Sometimes when the loneliness
presses hard
against my chest,
I lie my head on
my own splayed arm
and with my other arm,
I cradle myself.
When my head feels hot,
I lie my face against the vanity
to feel its coolness.
I hope it will
enter me
and I will be refreshed,
renewed,
someone different
from myself.

I stood on the corner
of Broadway and Yonge
and watched the snow
carefully descending,
pirouetting from the sky,
and the darkness
a backdrop
for a city living.

I felt alcohol and weed surge
through my blood as I made
my way to the subway
with condoms and fresh panties
in my pockets.
Semper paratus,
as they say.

I fuck strangers
and wake from the sleep of them.
I am weak, I know,
and vengeful. I am not beautiful.

(January 2016)