to a rock; you are diamond.

you used to be my hero.

maybe you still are,

when the days are violet and

i laugh at the way you used to dance

around the living room to Estrellida

and talk to the fishes; when the tears i drop

are not for you.

that is when you are still my hero.

it is appalling,

the way i have stopped

plucking out your grey hairs,

instead i cannot bear to look at them.

the way i have stopped getting your crude jokes

because the crude words have

sunken in and etched themselves

onto my skin when i was many times

their victim on the days your eyes are

black as coal and earth-less.

i remember embracing the tuck of your frown

and humming to your rants like they

are things to love,

and maybe then, my love was truest

because you didn’t need to be happy

and fit in my wants for me to love you this much.

my heart sags at a certain angle

for the stones of your heavy regrets

i inherit, yet these are not the kind of stones

we can surgically remove

or throw down a hill, because these are

the stepping stones i have acquired

in growing to understand the woman

who used to brave the world for me

and now sits in the dent of her pains

hoping for the world to ask her forgiveness.

you used to be my hero

and i feel like i am betraying you,

each day as they pass

when you make plans for a summer

you and i will not share,

but you make these plans anyway because deep down

you know they will never happen

yet you do it because it moves me

and gives you more to lose

when i too, become the tales of your suffering 

you will tell your sisters on the way to dinner.

today he said the way i licked my teeth after the meal

reminded him of you

and i was angry for the negative tone

but was i angry

because it was negative,

or because i didn’t want to be like you anymore?

i once wrote about my biggest inspiration,

and it was you,

because i loved every inch of you

and woke up to your words like gospel.

you will forever, still be the hero,

the inspiration. for you are

everything i loved

but everything i never want to be,

because growing into you has never looked so heartbreaking.

through the walls

it is a new kind of sadness

i carry with me,

like the overused plastic bags that have seen 

enough runs to the shops i so adamantly try to keep;

it is not heavyweight or bulky

but crunched up and sharp, slowly expanding with 

the weight i stretch it into each day.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me in bed, wide-eyed and struggling

with cold toes and incorrigible energies

sifting into the spaces of my centre,

catching me off guard.

it finds me calculating the meaning of happiness,

wondering where the equation went wrong in her mind,

where calculations are plenty but with illogical 

relative solutions.

it finds me listening through the cold plaster walls

to hear her yawn and remember

every distinct note and effort it takes

to be as tired as she is now.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me praying into the night sky,

for peace to fill her soul in a world too big for her

where some things cannot be possible.

it is the sadness that my tears can 

never truly explain and words become meaningless 

at the presence of knowing

a mother’s soul at peace

is hard to achieve as long as she is alive

and breathing into her cup of sorrows 

in the late of the night, clutching onto a demise 

that no chinese films or homemade meals

can distract her from.

i seek some rest 

in the soft of his shoulders,

in the reassurance of their words,

in the utmost reality where i am taught

to reach my happiness,

but there are too many hours in a day i have spent

thinking of her happiness

until it is mine,

therefore her sadness,

becomes mine,

but i do not have the strength to 

hold her life as mine to bear.

it is a new kind of sadness

i bring into a room full of comfort

in the walls with a sturdy door confining my tears within them;

a purple couch with a purple cushion i hold onto for dear life,

and a man who tells me

the sadness is not something i can

leave behind every Thursday afternoons, 

but it is something i make a part of me

and come to terms with.

to let go is to understand.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me understanding

the lack of shine in her forever eyes,

the sighs she lets out when she wakes

because her wishes for an endless sleep remain unanswered.

i understand the look she gives as she loses herself 

to the thoughts that live in shadows and comes out 

in the turn of the evening

because i too, have gone to that place

many, many times.

to let go of this,

is to let go of her heavy, heavy pain.