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[tffny-g]

What does it take to build a home?

How many tries will it take one broken man and woman, to build a home? 

How many maps of our hometowns, framed above the headboard 

How many $300 fluted west elm end tables and warm toned spotlights 

How many home-cooked meals to keep heartache at bay 

How many knee squeezes under the dinner table 

How many firsts until it’s time for seconds, and 

How many seconds until we’re allowed to hope for forever? 

What does it take to build a home?

I would like to build a home. 

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seeing your voice note notifications pop up on my screen 

I can almost imagine the rest of who you are 

let me imagine a little while longer 

before I actually learn you 

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When can I return your tupperware?

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I keep having recurring dreams of driving down slippery dark roads with my mother in the passenger seat, desperately trying to step down on faulty brakes that won’t give. I can’t seem to stop sleeping, but I don’t want to dream anymore. I don’t want to drive anymore - I don’t even want to ride shotgun. I grew up too fast, and I miss the backseat. Did you know that the day you see your father cry, and your mother crumble into pieces in your arms, is the day that you lose everything? It’s the day that you’re left with nobody in the whole wide world in front of whom you can safely be a child. It’s the day you lose everything. 

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2019 and I am still in a constant state of waiting around - a different kind of waiting than I am used to. Waiting and waiting on someone to finally say or do the wrong thing, for this person’s Pandora’s box of childhood traumas to finally manifest in the form of tangible, excruciating suffering - waiting seemingly forever - but the disappointment hasn’t come yet. It still hasn’t come. 

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Sept. - Dec.

September started slow and fuzzy, with residual summertime in my camera roll and much more “flight” than “fight” in my limbs. I moved in with myself, I wore cherries in my ears…I sketched, I smiled, I held on tightly to my identity while meeting mentors for coffee…I tried out the phrase “I’m a law student” and willed my heart to be entirely in it. September felt good to me.

October started with me and ma cooking together, fanning out our handmade noodles and tossing them in flour. I listened to her cry herself mute - I held her, I placed her pillow next to mine, and I shut myself off entirely to soften the second-hand blow. October was Peter. We met over dinner in a whimsical restaurant filled with children - we threaded through Nuit Blanche together that same night. Under the influence of art bringing the city to life, I let the idea of what it could be win me over. I let Peter fill my calendar once or twice a week, until he wasn’t enough to fill the idea of him anymore.

November was persistent, silent suffering, like a permanent headache. Autumn came and spread like wildfire over the treetops, across each brick-walled building, and the scent of it hit me head-first like a firetruck. Getting out of the house became trial and error. An internet friend once pointed out to me that since the early 2000s, I’ve written violently about the seasons, intertwining them with emotions. This autumn, I realized that I have seasonal affective disorder. I have it, I’m admitting it, and it’s fine... It’s fine. The air quality is different when the leaves start to decompose, and it makes me compulsively think about the autumn of 2015 - being told “Tiffany, I’d die for you”, and feeling absolute despair and absolutely whole  - and wondering if autumn will ever feel like something better…but it’s fine. On the days I ended up getting out of the house, my hair was always done and my makeup proper.

I picked up a coffee habit. I am digging deep inwards to figure out how to stop past traumas from manifesting in the present day. I made two important friends, one of whom is helping me unpack childhood trauma, using the buffer of a silly accent. We have spent a large chunk of time with each other’s families, and as it turns out, I really want to be a sister - all this time, I’ve wanted to be a sister, to have a sister, like I should have. A sister to lean on, to cry with, to make ma laugh better than I can by myself, and to share the burden of being the glue of the family. The other one while important, is “maybe” a friend, big and tall, and has comfortably found a resting place in my heart. My hands are more upfront with him than my voice is, and sometimes on a bad day, all I want is to wrap myself around him, rest my hand on his belly, and say nothing for a long time. I continue to be a magnet for men who harbour entire Pandora’s boxes for human hearts, and who try to fill up all their empty spaces with music that says what they don’t know how to say. I take my coffee now with a splash of milk.

December has me defeated by the cold. I can’t seem to stop sleeping, and I am desperate to get the colour out of my hair. I am restless to see Lisa over a hearty meal and alcohol, I am disenchanted with the concept of meeting new people, and I am exhausted from the thought of recruiting for employment…I am exhausted. I am remembering how to cry again...it feels like waking up from a deep slumber of careful contentment. I am exhausted, but still self-indulgent in my diet, my art, my writing, and my yoga practice. I am self-indulging in making myself feel whole throughout this winter.

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This morning I woke up to a poor grade and attended class with a heavy heart. Then dad made an impromptu drop-by, bringing me groceries, socks, toilet paper, brand new sheets, my winter coat, lots of snacks, alcohol, and a warm, ready-to-eat meal. Dad urged me to eat right away, and then he video-called my mother in to show her the scene, as if to say “look, I grocery-shopped for our daughter, look at her eating well, look at her tidy place, newly decorated with everything I brought for her”. Dad says very little to me, and his portion of parenting is typically complete with “do you need money?” and “send me your tax slips.” But this week, my mother hurt herself while hiking, so he pulled his weight in hands-on parenting. I imagine my father walking through the aisles at the supermarket, debating between Chinese broccoli and bok choi, and all I feel is tenderness. I remember making a remark a month ago about a particular rice wine that I like, and now here it is, a brand new bottle, that I picture dad specifically making a trip to LCBO for. And here is a whole box of unsweetened 70% dark chocolate bars, perfect for slipping out in class. Dad just knows. Dad says very little, but he listens, and just knows - I am just like him.  

I am a literal only-child, wealthy with love - dripping in love. 

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I am still stuck on second-hand suffering, I will never not be stuck on second-hand suffering, I am going to die of second-hand suffering 

I am so afraid of some power of the universe pulling me towards people who will give me second-hand suffering, I just want to stay in bed and sleep for a week 

People should stop having children, we need a world with less children who inherit previous generations’ suffering 

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Last night you sent me a recording of you singing [你，好不好] to your guitar, and I’ve already compulsively listened to it on repeat around 32 times - before bed, getting ready in the morning, and in the cafeteria after class. I’m addicted to your warm, Mandarin baritone…really, it makes my heart hurt, I mean literal chest pain. Reminds me of dad, and brother. Reminds me of yellow light peeking through apartment windows, and the feeling I would have traded the world for when he traded me for magic mushrooms on 2017’s lunar new year’s eve.

In August, L told me about the first time she smoked a cigarette - it felt so good that she compulsively chain-smoked 7 more to chase that initial feeling, only to throw up afterwards, crashing and burning. Makes me scared to admit that this may be me doing the exact same thing.

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Last time we spoke was mid-October. We met up at a Japanese sake bar and shared a pitcher of Sapporo, beef sashimi, torched salmon, and skewers. He was sneaky about paying the tab. His place was as I remembered: tidy, books lining the dresser, guitar in the corner. He offered me water in a mason jar and conversation to chew on before taking my hand. “Wait...you don’t have a boyfriend do you?” I laughed and he gave and gave and gave. He slept restlessly, loudly, slipping in and out for brief moments, always acknowledging me beside him. We woke with the sun and stepped into crisp morning air before parting ways at Osgoode station. 

June, surprised to see him in the crowd where we first met. Hollywood nose on an East Asian face, still restless for change, for big cities, for the next thing to come. And me, I am globe-trotting before law school and daydreaming of a career across borders. He says his “eventual” is the suburban dream with two little ones who share his face, and two more taken in for a second chance. Just like how he was given one. We danced like the first time, but not before he paused with, “Wait...you’re not seeing anyone right now are you?”, just like the last time. I hoped it wouldn’t be the last time. 

“Tiffany, you’re not much of a texter are you?” he asked me, even though he had equally made no attempt to reach out. “I think it’s because you are so independent.” I didn’t tell him, but it’s because I'd rather hold onto the romance of each time being possibly the very last time.

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March, with J

Half-awake in the early morning, shifting around looking for your body, moulding around your body, awake enough to notice that you moulded to fit mine around yours, even still asleep. My hand on your chest, yours atop mine. Feeling you growing big against my thigh. Nose buried in your armpit. Bright window, snow dressing the branches and car roofs. 

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November

Yesterday I lined up behind a man at the water fountain after getting off the treadmill, and when he turned around, I came face to face with deep green eyes and bone structure that I wanted to draw. He was a white man. But I was stunned by him, and I haven’t been stunned by an attractive face in a long time. I realized that since the end of my relationship with a white man, I have not been able to stop thinking about race. When I see a stranger, I first see their colour. When I see a man, I first look for their whiteness - if I find it, my gut churns. This isn’t the way we were meant to be with each other, see each other, and recognize our place with each other. Where did I go wrong? 

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In late January I met someone with a jaw as square as my father’s, and it took all but one date for me to picture a life with him

A life of double income and one house, built from him fighting for corporations and me for the people

Of Sunday mornings where we’d meet halfway over dim sum, turning off our phones and towards our two children

To teach them about the racial politics behind soup dumplings and fried rice.

It took all but a month for him to disappoint me, and all but two bad decisions for me to let myself slip into him anyway

Slip into a space where I tried to keep him, like trying to domesticate the Yellow River

Slip into frosty mornings folded into his hard planes, feeling the Taishan Mountain growing strong against my soft fields

I let myself slip into the familiarity of dynastic disappointment. 

Maybe because disappointment from him comes free of the shame of disappointment from a white man

But it’s been a month of this, and Spring has just slipped through the blinds and into all of the spaces between my bones 

This time last year, I wept for a whole day when I first tasted Spring in the air

I couldn’t stop thinking about death; I couldn’t find the space to romanticize life 

And now, I have space - lots of it - space to imagine.

It’s too much space to allow disappointment to keep collecting dust in the archives

It’s time to break the dynasty and make way for revolution. 

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From early December. In two weeks it will be a new April. I made a ‘Spring’ playlist yesterday. I’m ready for a whole new paradigm shift. I’m ready for new memory-associations with this season.

I’ve slept on average four hours a day for the past week. I’m writing papers on pre-modern history, the silk trade, the ancient Chinese institution for conducting international relations. I’ve begun to drink chai lattes because I’m in love with the feeling of holding, in my one hand, a warm cup that contains all the ingredients traded along the ancient spice routes. Sometimes when I need something to grasp onto to keep myself going, I think back to that horrible horrible week in April after the sky had come crashing down. But there I stood, clutching words of external recognition from a professor, feeling like my heart was solid...feeling like I finally had what was mine and will always be mine. 

And then I keep going, because this is mine. I’m more calm and forward-looking than I’ve ever be in my life.

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Second day post-yoga hair and an old camp shirt, curled up underneath this fluffy red blanket with the boy from my 7th grade daydreams. He’s drawing circles on my hip. We’re talking about our small bladders and old lovers and slowly filling in the gaps about all the growing pains that happened within these walls. Over Black Mirror and beer. Smelling like 1AM drunk-drowsy and feeling regretfully older than teenage. Feeling like this is a person I’ll truly never run out of tenderness for, no matter who it is that my heart’s gotten stuck on. 

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I’ve met him only twice, but for the past two days I haven’t been able to stop imagining doing things together: grocery shopping together, brushing our teeth together, going to temple together, me straightening his tie, him brushing my hair. I don’t know that I’ll even see him again, but I’m already in a state of terror, wondering to myself the distinct type of suffering this person will bring. And realizing that people are easy to let go of until somebody comes along and isn’t. And it won’t make sense - it doesn’t make sense - but it just is. 

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An impulsive, bad, cheap love poem (just like the ones I wrote at 16)

My heart’s been skipping all day 

Been a while since I’ve felt this way

Riding in your red stick Kia 

Is this really a good idea?