projectsummerseventeen

[projectsummerseventeen]

birney avenue// 31aug

Sometimes I question where flowers come from  and where they grow. If the air is better do they grow prettier with pink petals and long stalks?

(In the winter sad flowers cry transparent dew, freezing in the negative weather.  Or they simply exist in no man’s land, where good dreams don’t come true-- or come to die.)

And from the poor soil do the flowers grow consistently second-rate? Perhaps nothing you do can help the dull white fade into bloodred. As if it is better to be placed upon freshly made graves and left to wilt, roots exposed to fresh air, than to be left in the earth and dirt built from our decomposing bones.

[projectsummerseventeen]

langara, 49th avenue-marine drive// 19aug

People are afraid of balloons bursting open, spitting tiny pieces of elasticity. It’s fierce. It’s in their eyes. The apprehension, the squint of their eyes before they close, the glare of distrust. 

I think the emptiness kills me.  The bursting you can trust.  It’s a certainty-- overflowing air and decreasing  capacity, a limit in elasticity. It’s written in physics.  What of the quiet ones, with micro tears and little cracks slowly deflating as time passes, the air whooshing out of every pore, life essence draining, draining, draining

The emptiness kills me.

[projectsummerseventeen]

part three: vancouver

As if it is better to be placed upon freshly made graves and left to wilt

[projectsummerseventeen]

pacific// 14aug

Across the universe the sun has set.

We see it as a golden orb disappearing from the far east to west, and then completely, lost behind that horizon.

When you are a city girl the sun is slow and fast at the same time. It’s taking a stroll between buildings  and clouds, and then it’s sprinting towards the finish line.  When you’re a city girl you don’t notice it leave, until it’s two seconds too late.

I imagine sunset like technicolour lights flickering  on and off at the skyline. Sometimes it’s a sentient being but sometimes it’s the heat radiating at the end of the earth. I read somewhere that white is the sum  of every colour in the world added together. And so sunset is when the light finally tapers and thins and goes out with a spark.

Somewhere in the world the sun is rising.

[projectsummerseventeen]

intermission

And so sunset is when the light finally tapers and thins and goes out with a spark.

[projectsummerseventeen]

concrete jungle// 29jul

Sometimes the floor is lava and I have to try to walk around it, leaping on sofas and jumping on fences. When I’m not careful I drop keys and hundred dollar bills and memorabilia (like the teeth I kept from when I lost them at seven), so the floor swallows it up, red hot melted metal gushing in and closing at the top.

Other times the floor is fine, and cool and even beautiful, rare, true metals shining like stars against the concrete grey slabs. 

But mostly it is lava-- all things catching fire upon contact, burning its way through flesh and blood, charring meat into barbecue. My ankles leave it a second too late sometimes-- I’ve lied and told you it was from spilled water but I have third degree burns that will never heal, forever engraved into the very fabric of my existence. 

[projectsummerseventeen]

bookstacks// 22jul

[projectsummerseventeen]

inside a child’s secret world// 21jul

I’ve heard Heaven is yellow with big comfy beds and white fluffy comforters. Everyone chills on the clouds and nobody ever cries but the clouds.

[projectsummerseventeen]

clearwater bay road// 12jul

I’m wearing long denim in 30 degree weather because my high school deems it otherwise inappropriate. I was a big deal then, Head Girl in my fifth year-- when I walked the halls, people knew my name.  So whenever I’m back here I wear long pants because people know my name and my principal knows my face-- and I suppose my body cannot be seen from the neck down because for god’s sake (don’t take the Lord’s name in vain) be modest otherwise you’re showing too much and that suggests you’re asking for that much.

I came back with a nose stud on my face and five more piercings than I would be allowed, so when I see my disciplinary teachers my best friend rushes me past so I don’t have to explain. Once a --, forever a -- the words will haunt me for life. Some words are engraved into the values of who I am and who I could not be. I often wonder if I had known who I could have been earlier would I still struggle to seek  the good in everybody (and me)?

But my palms are sweating and heart palpitating, the ground beneath my feet still tremors with histories of all those who have walked here with me. As I pass all familiar faces, I wonder if they, one day, will become me. Today, I hear them screaming, shrieking, you’ve changed. I wonder if they know this is all inevitable with age. 

[projectsummerseventeen]

36 conduit road// 10jul

What if today I picked up the phone and a dull ache spreads through my fingertips shooting straight for my left arm and then centimeters from my heart? What if my mother tells me it’s arthritis early onset during my twenties, and my grandma panics and urges me to visit an oncologist? Or what if she says it’s because I don’t consume dairy and my bones are screaming in protest as they break down into a million tiny pieces?

But personally, I think it is a metaphor of my heartbreak, finally settling in from more than a decade ago, some time when my father left us when I was less than a year old.

[projectsummerseventeen]

kwun tong// 4jul

I told you the truth with tears trailing like fire blazing down my face.  And you say it’s been too many  years since we’ve made a wrong decision. I say the past still haunts me like thousands of ghosts of Christmases past, and you say I’ve no right to feel this way.  I find halfway across the world, I still find no resolution on  what we call foreign people stepping on our land.  If you listen closely you can mimic the words, even though the language divides us the tongue is the same-- sharp and twisting and spitting hatred deeply embedded within our systems, grossly intertwined with ignorance and arrogance that has no place between human hearts. 

What if we have no place on this earth? Us, here, the strong ones, the civilised ones, we have no place btween human hearts, with our computerised brains and emotional ties cauterised. 

[projectsummerseventeen]

part two: hong kong

Today, I hear them screaming, shrieking, you’ve changed. I wonder if they know this is all inevitable with age.

[projectsummerseventeen]

viewpoint// 7jun

What use is the thought of you if it doesn’t bring me to tears? Or fall on slippery floors when I am deep in the thought of you. How will I write poetry of you if you don’t say things like “I’m sorry” and “It’s not you it’s me”? Instead you tell me you love me and talk about blood red roses and make the bed when you leave my room while I’m at work scrubbing dishes and mopping the floor, putting out yellow signs:  Cautious, floor wet. 

[projectsummerseventeen]

intermission: phuket

How will I write poetry of you if you don’t say things like “I’m sorry” and “It’s not you it’s me”?

[projectsummerseventeen]

discovery bay// 27may

We lay out on a beach towel like a pair of fish waiting to be dried up in the tropical sun. I am wearing deep red, the colour of seduction and no one is the intended audience.  I imagine we lie with hooks in our mouths with invisible lines waiting to be found.  Maybe we lie dormant and wait for discovery or dare I say-- consumption.  Or maybe we were just enjoying ourselves until your Frisbee hit the back of my neck, and thinking I fail to understand, contemplate what age I am, as if an expiry date is stamped upon  the small of my back: “safe for consumption”.

[projectsummerseventeen]

in my room// 22 may

When I was young I was afraid of ghost stories.  I would hear alien tickings when I closed my eyes and witchy cackling.  I had apparitions stamped behind my eyelids, disappearing every time I opened my eyes.  In the middle of the night I’d run to my mother’s room, clutching a tiny blanket, forcing myself under her sheets. 

Now I stare at ceilings contemplating past heartbreaks, and write poetry in the dark.  All along the years I have been fantasising about our untimely deaths. I had so many apprehensions.  I thought maybe if I put all this into words Perhaps it would appease the demons. Mine, and the world’s. 

[projectsummerseventeen]

knutsford terrace// 19may

There is poison in the air, and cotton balls floating in the atmosphere like tiny bits of snow that got lost on the other side of the hemisphere. 

I curse the virus that somehow made its way down my stomach as I lie on the sofa, face pressed into the cold edge of the seat, lips pale and  stomach concave. 

This city sucks the soul out of me.