Untung Kita Masih Bicara

 Aku benci berada di dekat orang yang sedang main video game, kecuali berada di dekat kamu.

Jatuh cinta padamu bukan sebuah keputusan seperti saat aku mencintai orang lain. Kita tidak bertukar ucapan manis atau gombal picisan, tapi aku selalu senang mendengarkan celoteh semangat tentang belanjaan bajumu atau gadis-gadis barumu. Tanpa kita sadari, kita menjadi orang yang paling berbeda, kita berubah paling jauh untuk satu sama lain: kau rela menahan diri untuk aku dan aku rela melepas diri untuk kamu.

Jatuh cinta padamu mudah, meski bersamamu susah. Tiba-tiba main dan berkunjung berubah menjadi pulang. Aku ingat saat matamu berbinar melihatku ketika kau pulang dan tidak ingat bahwa aku menunggumu di rumah. 

Kita manusia-manusia yang rusak dan ketakutan. Aku tahu amarahmu padaku adalah hasil rasa terancam dan amarahku padamu adalah hasil keraguan. Apa yang kita katakan pada satu sama lain sesungguhnya hanyalah apa yang kita takutkan tentang diri sendiri.

Aku tidak tahu apa yang membuat kamu begitu berbekas di benakku, tapi di hatiku tersisa kawah. Saban hari aku menangisi kita yang tidak terjadi, kita yang selalu terluka. Terkadang aku memikirkan apa jadinya kalau aku betul memilihmu dan tinggal denganmu. Aku tidak tahu apa yang aku rindukan darimu, tapi aku senang mati bosan susah tidur di sampingmu. Aku tidak tahu apa yang aku tangisi dari kita yang selalu bertengkar, tapi aku selalu tahu merasa koyak dan tidak ikhlas berpisah denganmu kala itu. Aku mau kamu. 

26 Des 2017

The poet you fell in love with

This is me,
The poet you fell in love with
With all her silly murder mysteries and inconceivable love stories
With all her grand big ideas bursting out of her head
In all the excitement and vigor
That you fell in love with

This is me,
The college student that you didn't know you would've fallen in love with
Weaving the words that she loved the most
Just for a few nods of approval
Wanting to be in, but also be out
Always reaching for strangers and far away places
When all she wanted to be was
home

This is me,
The star-crossed lover that you didn't want to have to be loving
Again
All she wanted to keep was the fact that she managed to find happiness
Even in the worst times of her life
So that she can remind herself
That happiness is what she can make wherever she goes

This is me,
The poet you fell in love with
But she never wrote anything for you
Because every single thing she wrote
Or drew
Or made
Killed whatever was left of the ones never meant to last
But she did write a prayer on the first page of her new journal that said:
God, grant me the most truthful of beliefs
Till I may roam your earth in your faith and name
Grant me a peace of mind
That comes from remembrance of your company
Grant me tireless servitude and sweat
That comes from the certainty of your design
For there is no might or power except those of yours

This is me,
The basic, callous bitch you had to spend time falling in love with
She might have come off as weird
Or uncomfortably uncouth
But she's learning.
Pray, she's come so, so, so, so far with these things
From the poet you fell in love with

This is me,
The scarred lump of trembling anxiety you deem too emotionally expensive to keep falling in love with
She loves being good and being loved
So at the slightest chance of imperfection
when she is sized up and scanned for flaws
By gallant, impenetrable hearts,
She kicks water at sea and forgets how not to drown
Her thorns show and her nose just under
Paddling padding paddling
Just hoping to come up again

So remain at the seaboat
To sail yourself away, alive
Or watch
As she stops fighting the currents
And reminds herself how to float
To shore
With words
For you
As she heals the scratches and dries her wrinkled fingers
Out loud
Being the silly, bright, loving, although sometimes scared,
Poet you could've fallen in love with

Written March 2019

shivers and sighs

1

The rush in me was American
There was no being languid
No fingers dancing on arms
Or playful smiles bleeding into
Shivers and sighs

(shivers, sighs)

None of that
No basking in the sands of time
For the fruit is in sight
and time waits for no one
No racing hearts with expectations
Or undoing any buttons
None of that
Looking down and away
In the name of shunning vanity

Because, they thought,
Shouldn't passion
burn and blaze like bonfire
Rather than smoke away
like a hog in a pit?




2

The rush in me was American
Yet like the Javanese dancer
I do long being languid
Eyes catching and batting your sight
Pointy fingers swaying three breaths apart
Savoring each second with each step
Fingers waltzing on arms
Undoing each button
One story at a time
Playful smiles bleeding into
Careful shivers and longing sighs

(shivers, sighs)

And sparks fly
Yet sparks only fly when they want to
And you'd trade the world until they do
In this shackling stream of numbness
and unrelenting sanity we sit
Fingers twitching on the seat
Dearly holding onto the gear
Hoping for the next miracle to happen
So we can fall madly, stupidly,
ridiculously in love

Sitting on a park bench overlooking a playground
Where a beautiful child
Eyes wily but kind
Jet black locks like ivy vines
Stood on the dodgeball field screaming for others to play with
string after string of dripping red hearts dangling from wiry fingers
Edges salted white hoping others don't come near
A boneless Ali bouncing little patters
Desperately hoping for the foolish idea
of a shelter that won't
tear and fall after thirty suckerpunch holes in its walls

Dec 29, 2019

most people i write about
leave not long after i write about them
so here's to letting you go
in plain sincerity and peaceful detachment

maybe now i've gotten accustomed to
toaster-oven romance and
conclusive headlines in place of books cover-to-cover
so if i ever seemed impatient
or gripping blindly like a young baby's hand
forgive my panic and simply allow me to come back to myself

i couldn't tell whether your reluctance meant being careful
or disinterested
whether your stonewalling me was a challenge or your telling me off

so i'll keep at arm's length
and pretend that i'm not pining for any form of attention
i'll safeguard what little of myself i have
and protect it from bruising itself onto you

Falling Afraid

To be deathly real with you, 2018 was drabber than a dead pale tree on crackling land in a scorching drought. It started out pretty OK. I learned how to drive, I made new friends, but one decision led to the next and even though there are specks of amazing here and there, it's just mostly meh throughout: I was still reeling from the best relationship I've had. I was blueprinting my life around the hopes of returning to it. I desperately hopped between men I cared so little for, hoping that just one of them would stick on the wall.

At the end of the year, I physically opened up to the world and repelled, kept, and attracted the exact kinds of people I was hoping to. I scratched all my dating profiles out of the fear of getting found out by my coworkers, but moreover, out of the realization that this just wasn't getting me anywhere anymore.

So I let go. I let go of wanting a boyfriend. I let go of hoping to get back with my favorite ex. I let go of all that and reveled in being with my own self. I hung out and caught up with old friends. I went to places alone and felt okay doing so. Even when the one person I was hoping to make good acquaintances with let me down, I couldn't even get mad at their capriciousness because I was so OK about it.

So in the middle of my newfound peace and comfort with myself, I found the one thing I was praying so hard for the whole entire year.

Out of the blue, this dashing lad from high school materialized out of thin air and had the balls to hold awkward conversation with me for three hours straight, then take me to the movies, then to food, and drive me back. He also had the gall to change pronouns with me?

I tried not to think too much of it and shook it off, chalking it up to pure kindness and nostalgia, but holy cow did this man charm the kashoodles out of me.

Thing was, we kept talking and I soon realized that this person was clearly, surely, obviously making moves... and honestly, I was confused.

I was supposed to have crushes on my other friends. I was supposed to still hold on to my dreams of getting back together with my ex. I just never had the experience of having a suitor from a super bro-ey friend pool and it felt like breaking a non-existent bro-pact. Was I supposed to be all swept off my feet like that?

It was, by all means, brand new territory. Was I supposed to play cool? Was I supposed to whack him away like what I've been reading in dating horror stories? Was I supposed to bat away the hands I welcomed or pretend not to want to scoot closer on the bike rides home? I felt like the stickler nerd in class who didn't believe in fun but giggled along anyway.

So there I was, craving every single moment of coy affection that I wasn't sure how to return. There I was, unsticking the soles of my feet off the brakes. There I was, ever so confusedly removing humans from arbitrary friend-boxes.

There I was, slowly, carefully, falling scared.





Read partially on SoundCloud

2017

I finished the movie I've held off for so long:

I started working at a really cool media startup:

I graduated college.

I took a pretty big part making this movie:

I was a summer camp counselor.

I made a great friend.

I learned about being a person in ways I never thought I would.

I worked with this great lady:

And at this cool place:

I bought my plane tickets home.

I ate snow for my last birthday in the states.

(pictures coming up)