I write down notes for my novel and you jot down scenes for your screenplay while sitting in a cafe. I prefer the quiet of the house, the occasional sound of the air conditioner turning on.
There’s no talk between us of what we’re writing. No shop talk. A silent demarcation between Church and State. We discuss feeding schedules for our cat, a new duvet cover, and if our friends are happy or alcoholics or somewhere in between. Will they find love or will they find purpose, a new job, a baby on the way.
Two writers in one household. Both alike in temperance. Afterwards, I’m usually the first to apologize. Your face softens with relief, our laughter ringing out.
I walk from the living room to the balcony gazing gently over greenery. I see you down on the street walking briskly, your stride recognizable to me from any distance. I see you as someone separate from me, a person making their way to the cafe and my heart swells. With what? Something I can’t name. Is it love or a thought half remembered, a profound truth hidden and waiting. Is it a memory of loneliness, a memory of a time before you of frenzied typing and staring into space, a pain in the chest or is it a vision of a time after you, arthritic hands weaving a story white hair blowing from the air conditioning.
I’ll walk from the living room and onto the balcony look down onto the street and remember a gait I could recognize anywhere. I’ll remember your atrocious handwriting and your look that says, I understand. I’ll remember our laughter ringing out.
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.
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.
not in exotic locales do I love you but at home, I love you
I turn the leaf of a page and you’re playing video games, mute on the couch sighs beside the humming air purifier, the daily air quality warnings we check the weather app and it says moderate so we sit on the balcony that will always overlook the park, a view untarnished
music plays nearby, acoustic guitar and falsetto tones and the quiet sounds of the street, cars and trucks stopping and going, air brakes, and bird chatter
I write poems in my Notes app about here and now and not there and the past about where we are and not where we’ve been Maybe I think about where we’ll go but not seriously and only languidly only barely
The long weekend beckons and I say to you, It’s you; you’re the one I say it in earnest and not as a joke, something new and pure The long weekend and this long life made short and fleeting unrolling like a map where I close my eyes and place my fingertip down Here, right here I open my eyes to see where my finger has landed and it’s where I’m supposed to be
I love you the quiet, everyday of you the quiet everyday of you I love you
I have these dreams still —
two years later.
You are pushing a pram,
inside
are four small babies,
stacked
one on top
of each other.
I wanted to know
if you were happy.
You seemed happy,
pushing that pram
along the roadside.
Where was he?
I wondered.
Are you happy, I asked him.
I’m happy, he said.
In another dream,
the two of you
were at a wedding.
You were laughing,
and he was brushing
a lock of hair
from your face.
All our friends were there.
Everyone was happy.
The only difference
was you and me.
Once, I stood there
in your place.
I was laughing
and he was brushing
the hair from my face.
Our friends
were all around us.
Everyone was happy.
Are you happy, I ask you.
You push the pram away
down the roadside.
In the distance,
I see him.
He is waiting for you.
I wait for you
to look back.
I am standing there,
waiting.
Saturdays
are the hardest.
The weekend, in fact,
is difficult all around.
On Saturdays,
I would wake up early
and you would sleep in
until 10 or 11 or
whenever I would remember
to wake you.
We would go out for sushi
to the same place in
the same area,
Baldwin Village.
You always liked it there.
My adventurer
who went
to the same places to eat,
who would wave to me
from the window of my car
on his way home
every weekend,
on his way back
to the same city
to the same people
he’s always known.
What is it like
to live in the past?
Everything is laid out
like a delicate row
of maki, sashimi, nigiri.
The chopsticks
are neatly placed
at the side
of your small plate,
the soy sauce and
wasabi and ginger
within reach.
When it was over
between us
we made our way to the subway
and you asked me
if the subway was running.
I thought it was a curious
question but I realized
you were coming from
our old neighbourhood,
from her place,
near our old place.
I looked at you
and said,
You moved out
of that neighbourhood,
but you’re still going back.
My adventurer
on a Saturday afternoon
in Baldwin Village.
Now on Saturdays,
I go for a long walk
in the brightness
of the afternoon sun,
and somehow
I end up at
a sushi restaurant.
I eat my fill,
to fill my memory
of you and us.
The weekend
stretches out
in front of me
like a lifetime
of Saturdays
in Baldwin Village.
I would like to enter
your childhood home
enter your old bedroom
and sit on your lap
with your mom in the other room
I tell you I’ll be quiet
but I lie
though not on purpose
I would like to lay
everything before you,
go on my knees
in front of you,
kneeling before you
I would like to straddle
that line
with you
walk that line
with you,
skip back and forth
on that line
for you
at your leisure
I would like to feel
the violence of you
the fast and hard
mindlessness
of you
the gripping flesh
of you
I would like to pitch
forward
with you
into pitch night
with you
emerge in holy
morning light
with you
I would like
that nothingness
with you,
a deep rest
with you
I would like for you
to turn to me
and say nothing
to me,
absolutely nothing
to me
mostly though
I would like to lie
next to you
in your
childhood bedroom
I would like for you
to get up
at last,
and I will hear
the patter
of soft soles
and the clinking
of china in the kitchen
mostly though
I would like for you
to return to me
and maybe
you will bring for me
a tall glass
of water
I’m getting ready
to do the laundry.
I’m washing
the sheets.
The sheets are
stained
from Monday night
Tuesday morning.
There are these
relics around me.
There is a guitar
in the living room
that my ex gave me.
There is a lamp
on my bedside table
that a lover bought
for me once.
There are these
dried flowers
roses and white tulips
baby’s breath
hard twigs
and crispy leaves
tied with a white ribbon.
The tulips
were given to me
on a third date.
The roses
were handed to me
by a lovelorn man
on a street corner.
I tie them together
into a bundle
into a bow
on my little table
by my window
as if they are
one and the same.
They are.
They are
the relics of
hope and desire
and love and loss.
I look around
for relics of you.
There are no gifts
from you
no keepsakes
no evidence
no proof.
There once was
a bruise on my neck
on my chin
that I hid
with makeup.
I thought my date
at the time
would notice
but he did not.
He isn’t as
observant as you.
You are sharp
although
you pretend
to be dull.
You are wise
although
you pretend
to be foolish.
Why is there
no evidence of you?
I sit
in front of my mirror.
There you are.
You are unnoticed
and you are
present.
I get up
and stuff
the comforter
back into its casing.
White fluff
twirls and dances
in the open air
by my window
in the sunlight.
No evidence.
No evidence
of you
at all.
You like
your coffee
black.
Now I do
too.
You sleep
naked.
Now I do
too.
I didn’t know
you used to
smoke
cigarettes.
The day
you quit
was the day
before our
first date.
I didn’t know
until months later
that you removed
all your piercings
except for
that one.
Sometimes
I would forget
you don’t like
to read books
and you hated
school.
Love wipes
our memory.
There is only
white light
and this bright
feeling.
You became
someone I wanted.
I was always
who I was
except for that
black coffee thing
and the sleeping
naked thing.
And all those
punk shows
with you
on stage
with your guitar
and me
standing in
the audience
like a sleepy groupie.
Oh, and the drinking
of beers.
I never used to
touch the stuff.
That’s all you.
Now I wonder
if you’re smoking again.
Have you put
those piercings
back in?
Those are things
I wonder and
those are things
I would prefer
not to know
anymore.
Bird of Passage 