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.