love

if you were a little bit older

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

middle_distance

if you were a little bit older
Nokyoung Xayasane

They say you can’t have it all.
Who are these people?
What are their credentials?

I would like to have sex
with you
and still talk to you
afterwards.

I would like to stay up
late one night
just talking to you
about the nature of evil
and of goodness.
The next day
is a rainy Sunday morning.
I would like to order two pizzas
with your normal quirky toppings.
You like to combine toppings
that make no sense.
We usually get six sodas
with this particular deal.
The sodas stay in the fridge
for months
because we don’t drink pop.

I would like to watch Netflix with you
and fall asleep on our couch
with our orange cat between us.
We’ll get very indignant or upset
about the state of American schools,
the commericialism of the world,
or whatever topic
in whichever documentary
we happen upon
that afternoon.
We’ll worry about it for
ten to fifteen minutes afterwards,
the sting of humanity still strong and raw.
But then you suggest we go out for pho
or maybe sushi, all-you-can-eat, of course.
You know I only like to leave the house
for food.
We go out to eat
and I take photos of the food,
overhead shots of course
like a pro food blogger.
I tell you to ‘act natural’
and sometimes your hands are
in the photos.

That’s all I have now
photos of disembodied hands
in sepia-toned images.
It proves it was real,
some part of it,
the Instagram-filtered part
where everything is beautiful
and clear and perfectly positioned,
perfectly experienced.

I put those pictures in a drawer
in my mind, of course,
no one prints photos anymore,
except for that one time
I wanted to be old-timey
and I printed 100 photos
because I wanted to know it was real.
That we were real.

Now those photos are all I have.
They show
what we were and what we could’ve been
if you were a little bit older
and I was a little bit wiser.

I would like to enter a time machine
and remember your pretty face
and electric soul, as Lana Del Rey would say.
Those late summer afternoons
when I turned to you and you turned to me
and we fell asleep
on our couch
in our tiny apartment.

Yes, I think I would like
to have it all,
in my opinion.

a lover in every country

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

perfect_slut

how love changes you
Nokyoung Xayasane

when I was 26
I said, I would like
to have a lover in every country

but that would involve
first
leaving the country
first
saving the money

I’m sure it’s not a very nice thing
to use people
for my own amusement
but I’m sure they use me too

I get asked out for dinner and coffee
all the time
I never put much thought into it
but they usually want more
from me than I can give them
they’ve been sold
on the idea of love
everlasting love
I pity them sometimes
like a mother
with her small child
they don’t know any better
but they will

I ask myself,
is it my responsibility
to teach them
I really don’t know sometimes
actually, I’d rather not

how come when someone
does something nice
that’s never all it is
I guess we are humans after all

this was a time
when I had concluded
the worst things about love

how it changes you
into someone fit
for someone else
but I’ve never been one
to fit into a square peg
I’m a round hole
after all

how come being in love
feels like falling asleep in the snow
during a blizzard
they tell you never
to do this
because you’ll wake up dead

I always end up falling
asleep in the snow
no matter how hard
I try
to stay awake
the warmth
and the giving in
the ending of who
I was
and who I had
always wanted to be

that’s love
to me

and then it’s over
it ends
as it always does
and I try to relocate
the substance of myself
I find it dormant
in the snow
hidden
protected

I try to warm
it in my hands
I try to remember
I’m a round hole
after all
and you had always
been a square peg

but back to the dinner and coffee
can a guy ask a girl
for dinner and coffee
without that extra layer
of something else

in my experience,
this has never been the case
now this makes me
wonder about all your
coffee dates
and all my own
perhaps we were planning
our great escape
but we hadn’t admitted it
to ourselves, to each other
it makes me sad sometimes
to think about love
how transient it is
how fallible
how it changes
as we change

but anyways
the thing is
you’re the guy a girl
dates to get her parents upset
I’m the girl you marry
if I believed in marriage
I think that pretty much
says it all

I hope you find
what you’re looking for
I’m a round hole
after all

When we fall in love

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

it is like this with love_black and white

When we fall in love
Nokyoung Xayasane

When we fall in love
there is a part of us
that is historian.
We go back
in time,
and we recreate
that first moment.

I was 16
and working as a cashier.
You asked me
to go
to the work party.
I said,
I had other plans.
But then
I said,
Yes, I’d go with you.
When I was 24,
you asked me
to marry you.
I said,
Yes,
but then I said, No.
I had other plans.

I was 24.
I had decided
to become
a writer.
I was already a poet,
secretly.
I fell in love
with poetry,
and I fell in love
with you
by accident.
I told you
how I felt,
but you preferred
girls who listened
to Taylor Swift,
exclusively.
I remember
when we hugged,
you’d lift me
off
the
ground.
My head would spin
and the world
was full of light.

I was 27
and I was reeling
from three men.
I now
call them
attachment,
love,
and lust.
I told you
I wanted to learn
how to play the guitar.
I wanted to write songs.
You played me
your creations
and sat
a respectful
distance
away.
I never learned
how to play the guitar,
did I?
And we never wrote
those songs together,
did we?
Instead,
we created
a life
together
until we realized
we could go
no further.

I’m 31
and I’m not sure
if I’m in love
with you.
I don’t know,
to be honest.
I never know
right away.
It always happens
to me
as if
by accident.

Maybe if you invite me
to your work party,
I’ll tell you
I have other plans.

Maybe if you invite me
over for tea,
I’ll go
and lie my head
gently
on the sofa.

Maybe we’ll write
songs together,
but you’re not a musician.
No songs
will be written.

Maybe this,
maybe that.

They say,
there is a part of us
that is historian
when we fall in love.
Is this true?
Yes, I think
maybe,
just maybe,
it is.

to love without question

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

middle_distance

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.

it is like this with love

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

it is like this with love_black and white

it is like this with love,
Nokyoung Xayasane

I see, I hear,
I feel you
drawing near.

But it is only
my imagination.

You are elsewhere
in another city
with another person.
You are happy
and you are living a life
of your own choosing.

Once, we used to live
within five minutes
of each other.
But we never
saw each other.
We rarely spoke.
I loved someone,
and you loved someone.
I was trying
to move on.
I was
earnestly trying
to move on.

When I moved
to Toronto,
you visited me
for coffee.
We were both
an hour late.
We both blamed
the traffic.
The traffic, you said.
The TTC, I said.
You had not changed.
When I speak
with you
it is
as if
we are
the only two people
existing.
We are
the only two people
fumbling and falling,
trying to understand the world
and the people
within it.

Sometimes
when my chest
feels heavy,
I think of your face.
You are always
laughing
and smiling.
You are always
young
and wise
and gentle.

I remember
when you first touched me.
You reached out
with a wavering hand,
trembling,
and you touched
my shoulder.
It was full of
hesitation,
and fear.
I was amused
by the way
you touched me.
It was
as if
l was something
breakable.
But now I think,
it was you
who was afraid
of breaking.

I admit,
I wanted to tarnish you.
I wanted to blacken
your lily-white skin,
your large blue eyes.
I wanted them
to see me
as I was
in all my ugliness
in all my beauty,
in all my desperate yearning
to know
and to understand
everything,
everything.
Suddenly,
I wanted to rip open
the covers
and read the words inside,
but I put that book down,
I put it down,
gently.
There was always
something about you
that remained unknowable.
There was always
something about you
that I wanted
to keep safe.
Sometimes
it is like this
with love.

And when I think of you,
I think of the summer light,
and the orange afterglow
inside closed eyelids,
I think of
cotton candy at the fair,
laughter at the park,
I think of a child
opening presents
full of wonder
and despair.

Many things
have changed,
I know.
Many things
that were done
in anger and anguish
cannot be undone.
There have been
new jobs, new people,
but they have all
come and gone.
It is you
who remains.
It is you
who is
unchanged
for me.
It is you
who I love.
After all this time,
I love you, still.

one day, I was in love

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Nok_black_and_white

one day
Nokyoung Xayasane

One day, I was in love.
And then I was not.
One day, I was living a life
that was at once familiar
and peaceful.
I remember
we made gnocchi
one early evening
while the music played
throughout
our one-bedroom apartment.
We stood in our tiny kitchen.
I remember the blue tiles,
the yellow paint, owl
teacups stared out at us.
Outside, the sky was slowly
turning pink.
The music played,
heart beats, slow and
filled with aching
and the pain of joy.
I knew the music
would stop eventually,
but I still looked at you,
and spoke words that would
vanish into thin air, into
the music’s heartbeat,
into the evening sky,
staining the concrete
with a blameless pink.
I’m glad you have good
taste in music, I said.
You have a nice smile, you said.
I laughed and the music played,
pure and tender.
One day, I was in love.
And then one day, I was not.
But the music
I can still hear it.
And it is still filled
with such sheer
blinding
beauty.

(April 2016)

https://youtu.be/Tp-rmiUEQpU

We will call out to each other through the air

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

middle_distance

graft
Nokyoung Xayasane

I turn over
in my sleep.
Was it just
three weeks ago
when we first met?

These days,
time
seems so
condensed.
A lifetime
passes in
twenty-four hours,
everything changes,
distorts, evolves.

Things are lost
and found,
misplaced
and irretrievable,
people emerge
and fall away.
Nothing remains.

We are
the minutes
that tick by,
voices
sailing through
the air.

You told me
once,
that everyone is
searching for love
in their own
way.
Their loosened
hearts stumbling
through the darkness.
Their arms
outstretched
clutching
at the air,
hoping
to land
on something
soft and warm
and true.

I wish
I could’ve been
that person for
you,
for all that
have come
and gone.

I wish
we could’ve been
those people
for each other
all our lives.

Instead,
I’ll write you
these lines
and you’ll
put
pencil
to paper,
trying in vain
to graft
something
simple
and true.

We will
call out
to each other
through
the air.

(March 2016)

We shone just as we were

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Indio, California (19 April 2012)

Indio, California (19 April 2012)

California
Nokyoung Xayasane

Do you remember
our car ride
through California?
The sun and wind,
those ten days.
All of it.

No road
could hold us.
I didn’t care
for roadmaps,
and neither
did you.
We existed
in this
closed box,
headed on
a journey
of no return.
The wind
and air
and sky
all around us.

We shone
just as we were,
didn’t we?
You saw me
just as I was.
I loved you,
boy,
I loved you,
didn’t I?

We drove along
the streets
of Los Angeles
in our rented car.
Remember,
I didn’t want
a roadmap
and you never
cared for them.
We rented a hotel room
in West Hollywood.
The room was lit
by a single
bare bulb,
the sheets
were thin
and itched,
the carpet
was threadbare
and worn.
We threw
the sheets up,
and hurried
beneath them.
We were
never so close.

At night,
we met a man at a bar
who told us
we must go
to Venice beach.
We did.
We shared fish tacos
on the boardwalk.
We ran
along the beach,
the seagulls
glittering in the sky,
the sand endless,
our laughter
effortless and wide and clear.
We shone
just as we were.

Later,
the deserts of Indio
opened up for us.
You in your rolled up jeans,
me alongside
in high-waisted shorts
and an oversized hat.
There were
endless throngs
of beautiful people
in sunglasses,
white fringe,
expounding on cleanses,
contemplating yoga stances,
bare-breasted women
and musicians
tongue kissing on stage.

The music
began,
the stages
flooded
with lights.
You looked at me
and I felt
the world
beginning
and beginning
again and again.

The sun scorched our
bodies brown,
we glistened
with the midday
heat,
the music
never ends.
It never stops.
We danced
and danced
and danced.
We smoked
with strangers,
we laughed
until we cried,
we kissed
until we were sore.

When night fell
our second wind rose.
I heard
the music
pick up again.
I was
who I always
wanted to be,
there with you.
You were rain
drenching
the cracked desert
earth.
We were
who we
always
hoped to be.

I love you,
I said.
I’m glad you exist,
you said.
And the world
kept beginning.

(1 March 2016)

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