The well of generational trauma
My parents drank from the well.
There was no baptism
or ceremony. Where I lived,
the poison was in the water.
I held my breath
as they dunked my head in,
told me to drink,
told me it would be good for me.
Our bloodline is tainted
because well-meaning elders
with loud voices and sharp hands,
never questioned
what they should have.
Grandma worries
about asbestos under the plaster,
when the poison is in our veins.
The poem you just read was a finalist at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival.
To a boy I once loved
There is a house I only visit
in my head. I see us in the kitchen,
planning our future over
flan and coffee.
I see our cream-colored cat,
our purple front door.
Him tending to the plants,
humming some old song.
The garden is blooming,
the sun is warm.
I want to preserve this place
for as long as I can.
Now when I visit,
the sky is overcast,
the purple door, shut.
The flowers we planted
crumble in my hands.
He stands in front of me
with sadness in his shirt pocket.
Asks why I showed him a future
that wasn’t real.
I tell him I am sorry –
‘‘That version of the truth
was the only one I had.’’
I tell him, somewhere
in this universe,
we have our house
and cat and garden.
I pull open the curtains
to see him in our kitchen,
discussing travel plans with a
different version of me.
There is love and flan on the table –
sunlight drips from our hair.
She is everything
I couldn’t be.
People are hungry for these poems.
The above poem has a combined total of 21,185 likes & 384 comments on Instagram.
Earth Girl meets Air
(a queer love poem)
I once met a girl who wore crystals
around her wrist like creeping ivy.
She was grounded where
I was whimsy –
an Earth Girl to my Air.
We spent the summer learning
each other’s languages.
She gave me her trunk to lean on.
I blew metaphors in her ear.
That night, I pointed at the
vast kaleidoscope sky.
She couldn’t see what I did –
said it all just looked like air.
She reaches out to touch me,
and I float through the cracks
in her fingers.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used
her spine as an anchor.
Maybe I shouldn’t have seen her
as my connection to the ground.
Maybe I was too light and
shifting next to the elements
she usually held.
I think it ended
simply because she
was Earth and I am Air.
Our parting was as
natural as the rain.
She tied her shoelaces,
gathered all her trees,
dragged her grand,
tectonic plates elsewhere.
I look at her again,
before I am pulled in a new
direction by a gust of wind.
Stroke her face one last
time, then float away.
The above poem has 31,924 likes & 311 comments on Instagram.
The little gay girl I carried inside me
My mother is the kind of woman
who keeps a spotless home:
weeds plucked, laundry folded,
shoes out of sight.
So, when I was six years old,
she put on her rubber gloves –
tucked my gay parts inside me
like she was clearing away
stained dishes.
And I grew up ‘‘straight,’’
unaware of the little gay girl
I carried in my belly.
All the while, she did not die.
She simply grew inward,
like a droopy plant
sitting in the shade.
Sometimes, she pressed
her cheek to my skin.
Other times, I felt her
scratching inside me.
She eavesdropped on
high school sleepovers
and conversations about boys.
When I had my first kiss,
she made herself so small
she nearly vanished
completely.
Then one day,
after she’d been asleep
for so long,
I met you.
My little gay girl glowed
through my skin,
and for the first time,
I saw her.
She morphed into a dozen candles
and my body,
once vast and rolling,
folded itself into a flimsy
lantern shell.
‘‘Use your light
to find your way home,’’
you whispered.
And when she was too scared
to climb out on her own,
you went down there with her.
Held her hand and told her
she didn’t need to stay a ghost.
Last month, I saw my mom
at a family dinner.
My little gay girl,
now tall and blooming
from all the sunlight on her skin.
My mother curls her lip
and calls her disgusting –
attempts to send her
back into my ribcage so
she can shut the door for good.
My little gay girl stays put;
her sun-drenched limbs
stretched across the table.
In this light, my mother
doesn’t look frightening –
and my little gay girl
is now a woman.
She looks her in the eye,
tosses her hair,
and laughs.
The above poem was a finalist at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival. It also blew up on Instagram – 17,621 likes & 309 comments.
Multiverses
I no longer think about
all the versions of you
locking eyes with all
the versions of me.
I no longer think about the
infinite Sundays in bed.
Instead, I think of all the
beautiful people I have the
privilege to meet –
all the versions of me who
end up devastatingly
fascinated with people
who aren’t you.
If multiverses exist,
there are places in this
universe where you don’t
exist at all.
There are places in this
universe where I am happy
without you.
To the men on the street who shout ni hao
You arrive at my border line,
compass in pocket.
For I am foreign land,
and you are a thirsty voyager,
dividing my flesh into countries
with dirty fingernails.
You stick flags along my spine,
for you seek a China doll.
All the while forgetting
I am five feet of flesh and bone.
But you don’t see skin,
you see origami paper.
And those fingers,
they’re aching to fold me –
slice me in half with
that tongue.
Slice me like meat
on a plate,
legs spread like
chopsticks.
Chop up my limbs.
Stuff ‘em in a plastic bag.
Thank you, come again!
I am a lovely dumpling girl
curtsying behind
take-out box walls,
and you eat me with a fork,
doused in soy sauce
and ignorance.
But what you’ll find is
I taste like opinions.
I’d drown you in the ocean
between my legs.
I pity the men
who wash up on my shores,
mistaking me for lands
that promise floral fans and
mandarin orange summers,
when what I am is a woman –
nothing more,
nothing less.
If I were your home
I’d tell you to drop your
baggage at my door.
We’d unpack it together –
put some on a shelf next to mine.
This is a home for all your pieces,
the broken ones too.
I’d tuck your demons in
a shoebox in the attic.
And I swear I won’t get mad
if one sneaks out and we
search for hours only to find
it asleep in our bed.
And if this house is too small to fit
the entirety of you,
I’ll hang your leaky bits from
the tip of my collarbone.
Then we’ll dance in the kitchen
as the kettle boils, singing,
‘‘Bless this home.’’
The above poem has a combined total of 37,504 likes & 390 comments on Instagram.
Love Yourself…
…compliments your outfit
but does not want to take it off.
Love Yourself cannot scratch your back,
cannot laugh at your jokes.
Love Yourself takes you to
the other side of the world
but leaves you to watch
the sunset alone.
Love Yourself is
THE party of the year.
Except everyone is too preoccupied
with their phones to dance.
Love Yourself never gets called on
double dates, never serves breakfast in bed.
Love Yourself showers you with gifts
but always exactly what you ask for.
Love Yourself says,
‘‘All the sex in the world won’t buy contentment.’’
Love Yourself forgets to mention that
neither will all the affirmation notebooks.
Love Yourself says freedom is better.
Love Yourself doesn’t know if that’s true.
Love Yourself is so utterly valuable
but so utterly enraging
when said without a thought.
Love Yourself is life-changing at best,
a Target-wall-hanging at worst.
Love Yourself accepts you
exactly as you are,
strokes your hair,
tells you that you’re beautiful.
I say, ‘‘I already know.’’
The poem you’re about to read has 36,752 likes & 516 comments.
“How are you?” my great-aunt asks, pouring tea from a big clay pot.
She looks at me with curiosity; a wall of dim sum steamers between us.
I want to tell her about the woman who broke my heart.
But I know “How are you?’’ means
“Tell me how you are in the least controversial way.”
Her chopsticks clink against her bowl, and I am reminded of how easily it could
shatter. My dad once told me not to be a bull in a china shop.
“Go delicately; watch where you step.”
A bull, a mantis, and a gay girl walk into an Asian restaurant
The Western part of me is screaming. I want to tear
through the table—turn it upside down with my
horns.
This is the part of me that wants chaos and blood.
The part I keep hidden.
My great-aunt pours us more tea, and I notice the watercolor stems on the pot—
how they’re as thin and papery as her veins.
If the bull is let loose, it would tear right through her.
Go delicately; watch where you step.
“How are you?” she asks. I rein in the bull, pat its grizzly head. Leaning into its
neck, I whisper, not every place is your battleground.
Here, I must move softly; an Asian mantis gliding through a china store.
“I’ve been stressed,” I say, without going into detail.
This is my way of being authentic while causing the
least pain.
The bull squirms in its seat. I picture it charging
across the restaurant—shards of glass in my lap,
bloodstains on the tablecloth.
In a rush of panic, I check on my aunt.
The bull sits quietly in a corner, breathing down her neck.
Not every place is your battleground…
And so, we lay our pieces across the table like carefully chosen mahjong tiles.
“This is the only way to make it work,” says Mantis, taking a bite of stir-fried cabbage.
“Can you truly connect without showing your full self?” asks the bull.
I don’t know.
But I’ve been doing it my whole life.
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