I guess beauty, and comfort, and seals
were never going to cut it for me.
I wanted something more.
I wanted a destiny
that involved a growing of my own garden,
yo onsong sa jarding. Not a burden
but a tending, and a mending
of the things broken and stinging.
The things that could not be anything but thorns, by your own recounting,
but could be something more, if the story were to take a different approach to
healing.
I’m done walking amongst the shores of smaller losses.
I’m done with the islands that conceal pain.
I’m done with the ways you tried to make me into the horse’s
feigning, the Trojan boats that came
in the night, and made away
with my absence of stage-fright,
with the lines that were sent for a rewrite
and ever came back again.
Healing
something so damaged, something so broken;
I hope you’ve been able to get out there, to work with the population
to understand why you never understood who we were. Who we are as a sensation
and as a family of emotions too beautiful to be subject to annihilation.
You added yet more tribulation
to the story of Kristang. Individuation
has reduced it, but this is your claim to fame, I guess. Reparations
aren’t necessary. This is
healing.
I want you to let go.
I want you to roam, and be the person
you always wanted to be,
just like I said in February 2016,
and May 2017,
and at every fucking point where we once dreamed
together (or at least you had me believe).
Healing
is believing in you, still, after all this time.
Seeing is revealing
that to me, at least—
you can still be a good and beautiful person.
You can still have your very own destiny.