ichor(us), icarus
i want you to know that i have not always been this way,
that the world has carved out a place it deems right for me,
where my pain, at its most golden hour, is ours: where
the weight of this collective grief
cannot be subsumed by any one person:
even my mother, willpower strong as steel
cries herself to sleep
for want of dreaming. i could tell you
a thousand ways we have reached, hungry
for the stars—that we believed,
ad astra per aspera: past the thorns, the stars
would be made lovelier by their bloodiness.
the wounds on our hands still raw, staining
our chests crimson—or is it the other way around?
what if i don’t want this grief
to be a generational burden? what if
i want my children
and their children
to learn to reach for the stars without the shadow, the stubble, of the thorns…
if everything that has been dyed, has died, will fade
and they will once again be freed
to shine with the stars and write from their hearts
something lovely; something human.
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chrysanthemum tea
for those who still grapple with the shooting on march 16, 2021.
i need you to understand that
after all these years, dim sum still tastes like ghosts
that
the pitter-patter of cantonese punctures the air like bullets—
spraying casings like the ephemera of death, like
oversteeped jupu tea, astringent
to the taste, biting—
like powder and steel on the naked warmth that is my tongue. you know,
chrysanthemums always remind me of the dead. petals folding inwards,
concave as they melt
to the touch,
like the warmth, like the love,
is still not enough to keep them alive.
once,
before i understood sainthood,
i picked a chrysanthemum and
placed it in my hair and
my mother screamed herself raw
like she saw
bullets themselves peppering my skin, sinking
into the soft flesh of my exposed swan-neck, curved
at an impossible angle, the angel
of death upon our doorstep and
back then i did not understand her
but that was before i drank
chrysanthemum tea.
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I imagine it’s always easier to do something monstrous if you can convince yourself you aren’t going to, up to the last minute, until you do.
— Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves
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Under what conditions does unconditional love become no more? The answer is you will never not cry for your father.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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Pulled herself over all sorts of lines to get here. Drew this line from herself to him, her father, all by herself, just to be close. No, the line was there, is always there, will always be there, but she's trying to reinforce, to strengthen. Blood and bone across the water, across continents and borders.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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You feel you have never been strangers. You do not want to leave each other, because to leave is to have the thing die in its current form and there is something, something in this that neither is willing to relinquish.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it's better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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How does one shake off desire?To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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It is a strange thing, to desire your best friend; two pairs of hands wandering past their boundaries, asking forgiveness rather than permission: 'Is this OK?' coming a fraction after the motion. Sometimes, you cry in the dark.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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You came here to ask her if she remembers how urgent that kiss was. Twisted in her covers in the darkness. No words at all. An honest meeting. You saw nothing but her familiar shape. You listened to her gentle, measured breaths and understood what you wanted.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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The gaze requires no words at all; it is an honest meeting.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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You gazed at each other then with the same open-eyed wonder that keeps startling you at various intervals since you met. The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something. A happy accident. A messy miracle.
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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"You two are in something. I don't know what it is, but you guys are in something. Some people call it a relationship, some call it friendship, some call it love, but you two, you two are in something."
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
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The purpose of war is to preserve the things we cherish, to protect the people we love. I will fight alongside you as much as you please; I will even fight with you. But I want to be the person who is there when the fight is over. I want to the one you are fighting for.
— Martha Keyes, The Art of Victory (The Donovans #1)
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Trust is like a key, and without it, all the best parts of love remain locked away.
— Martha Keyes, The Art of Victory (The Donovans #1)
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"A strong man does not want a mirror of himself in a wife, Miss Donovan," he said. "The man who fears a confident woman is a man whose true fear is his own weakness being challenged."
— Martha Keyes, The Art of Victory (The Donovans #1)
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