"lines on my face, tears in my eyes, words in between my lips: a life unfolds"—-Secrets|Letters to Sylvia
a ring on your plate when i cooked you
eggs, our years apart summarised into one morning
of jars and jars, bottled up feelings
of you looking into me, looking into something
of me saying things without a sound
our lives in suspended compartments
bubbles of cliches against time voices people
it is kind, it is patient and it is all you need but
it doesn’t conquer all, it’s never the answer
my love for you, insincere and vague.
skin to skin I could feel us
-the liquid beneath our feet,
trampling into endless vacuum,
bleak and emptied I barely
recognise your bald cry, a far sea
distant and I am no more
your mother–
you have arrived into
a morning song
you are
hope, hopping
you trample here
and there and in between
existence
for absence is what
you do best, to make
the heart grows fonder
resilience
isn’t your strength
you’d stay in bed for days
for tiny heartbreaks
persistence is
when you speak
of love you never
speak low
even in silence
your screams
aloud
loving to the end
longing to be
found
again
you’re my star, my big big shining star, I met you
one night, I met you under the limelight
your oversized shirt and my boots a number too small, they hurt my feet I’ve been limping dancing my years away
if only I knew how to tell you how I long
to hold your hand, but your fingers show me you want nothing but to slip them into mine and be vulnerable
so I held my guard down for that one. minute.
you didn’t turn the lights on and sat in the dark with me and I turned sluggish swimming an ocean of pride,
where’s my life-jacket?
still I let you
I let you love
you’re something big and I am
nothing more than forgotten dew in
a windy morning, but you,
you are sunlight
you are a new day
you have that smile, that
held back smile and a twinkle
in the eye
that says that I am
more than what I show
and I feel that I am more
than I want to be
hello hello, you said hello
I said goodbye, I love you, goodbye
-hello, goodbye, I love you
from Letters to Lovers Lost, re-published just now.
Far beneath mother’s womb rests a story of a knight who one day, in a faraway future, will speak of the truth.
The dragons in knowing this had prepared him prior to my birth for a future quest to find mother. Ali would settle me in a little basket near the river, for I was unwanted as Moses. And when the bell church rang three times, the knight would kiss me and present me to mother.
The day came and after a long challenging journey, the knight found mother. Mother and the knight finally met and shared a long kiss. Secrets were dripping out of their mouths, pearls born into the longing sea.
The knight, then, upon seeing an abundance of affection in mother’s eyes, bargained for her love. Mother stepped back, wailing.
The dragons, having the ability to hear her from far-off distance, alert and awake, realised the knight had betrayed them. They ran amok, flying in a speed of light and took me away from mother.
So much wind I feel in my heart and I cannot in the slightest remember flying back the time father was long asleep. But I vividly remember that he was. He was there but he wasn’t, it’s the only thing I am familiar with. But I remember flying across the sky with no end in sight.
In Ali’s stories, the dragons brought me back to father’s side. He was fast asleep so they put me on Ali’s lap instead.
They told Ali to never speak of mother, ever again.
everybody wants a piece of that fame
you bring to the table
so they put you on a silver plate at first
but then they feel it’s too fancy for
a hollywood roadkill like you so
they move you to
a worn out wooden cutting board
slice you up real nice into tiny bits of pieces
each to their own but
you’re there for everyone, suit yourself!
they happily
chew you up real slow
saving every flavor splattered on
the walls of their mouths their gums they lick
their teeth and lips everytime they got
that fancy exposure
they swallow you and finger the rest
of your blood
on their knives
and I sit there watching
thinking if I should get
my share
of that fame
but I am not
made for the public eye
I spill your tea on
everyone’s table
this fame of yours
hardly fits
my brain, should you
know what I want, it’s
your crimson blood
rushing through
my flesh
I want that lush
I want that rush
when i you and you,
me
“Mirrors”, Letters to Sylvia, 2019
These were the nights when gaps spotted in our time loop and father came back to us.
He’d travelled to stay for few days, playing house. Mother’s smiles reappeared and she’d dance under the moonlight.
At night I would see from a slit on the door slightly ajar, his eyes turning tender and kind, her complexion radiant.
I’d see them holding each other, her breasts upon his chest. He’d tell her places he’s afraid of, she’d tell him her dreams.
She’d say, “Wherever you are in life you’ll always have tonight.”
They’d look each other in the eyes and after a while she’d lead him but she’d be the only one who was dancing. She’d twirl to the ticking clock, she’d circle through time while he was drinking –one gulp after another, gazing intently at her –a much younger her, at their younger selves.
He’d hum her old letters he knew by heart with a voice barely heard.
Time would stop and in that second I’d know, wherever I am in life I’ll have them forever in my heart.
there was a time when
everything was everything and
we didn’t try to be anything
what do you carry around all day
besides a bucket of flowers
and heart full of promises of a new day?
here’s a tiny sting of guilt to share
there there, i’ve been there
nobody likes anybody in this town
forgive me i didn’t know better
Lately I’ve been thinking of the reason behind all of these words that I am writing (and carelessly spreading into this fucked up wounded world).
But then I remember this young girl who changed her mind about jumping out of her window, because of my words, and I thought that is enough of a reason.
Camus died of a car accident, and not of his lungs. Life is absurd. Everybody thinks they knew the answers.
These words have been kept, hidden, for almost eighteen years. She was born just to be, but never meant to be shared. But almost two years ago, her presence became urgent. She was cut in pieces and put together in a hurry but did made it in time to be read by people who needed them.
If there’s one thing I love about love, is that it expands as you grow. My love for her imperfection has never been this courageous, and I’d like to extend it to you.
Now celebrating her two years arriving into the world, she will be available to you lovely people in Asia. If you speak Bahasa and is interested in providing her a home, message me.
Love, Maia.
is there any way to make existence less of a burden?
how do you write the things you cannot explain?
how do you live the life that isn’t yours to begin with?
i am rewriting my book. and in my life, there’ll always be second editions.
Illustration: “Gabrielle Cot” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau via @_ars_mundi
i can never understand how
the universe works; or how you
expand like the milky way spreading
in space i can only stare from
a good distance.
“…there are clouds in these dreams and i am flying hard between ashes,
did you not get burned at stakes?
there are words in these dreams but I am not one saying them,
to swallow alone is pain. to breathe, a sin.
not one word out but here are letters for when you wake up,
she said, you will tell them how to say it out loud,
even with tears in their eyes. tell them.
and so I write.”
Get this book here.
it’s always messy down here in your basement
where memories go to a happy place
they say i’m in love with love
but i never knew how to flaunt it
in between unsaid words and
staggering poetry so let me write it simple:
i want you, life, serene and tender
i want you, love, without going so much on a bender
Right before our parting, mother sat me down in a meadow. She apologetically held my hands then placed a flower crown on my hair.
She said, “Remember this, love, for time is a loop. You will come back for me.”
Little did she know, time was in denial.
So suddenly as I realised this, she turned into a montage of old photographs between flashing lights.
I saw her,
the staggering girl between
dark webs,
I saw her vague fingers inside
his feathered glory,
such indifferent beak cloud,
white rush oh there there
brute brute blood!
here’s burning roof and tower
the centre cannot hold,
things fall apart…
____
Phrases in W. B. Yeats’ poems “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming”, in this part of my book, are rearranged in an attempt of deconstruction. WB Yeats poems are an integral and essential part of my book, When I, My Own Daughter, available here.
Photo Credit: Alessio Albi
…But death, death was real. She and mother, they made a promise to see each other. They waited patiently and then the one day, that one day she’d knock on her door and not the other way around.
She never counted me in.
In her stories it was always her that was lost (and found), but never me. I was always here and there, existed in static equilibrium, already defined, captured.
She was the one who decides where to go with her words. She was, to me, knowledge and ignorance, forgiveness and revenge, all in one.
Pre-Order 60% off throughout April.
i’ve been carving memories on dry walls
four seasons of loneliness and you came bearing your own
stories of a little girl named Lara
her face her smile her every breath you inhale her
a picture perfect deep into your soul
she exists to you in ways that I could not
she has a smile that’s similar to mine, you said
her hair is golden like the sun,
this little ballerina and her pink tutu
and when she cries you cup her tears in your palms letting
them soak into the lines of your hands that once
a fortune teller told you, you wouldn’t make it to forty,
that you would be entangled in a story like none other
she said I would write them for you so daddy’s little girl
could forever lives in rhymes…
in bedtime stories and lullabies…
It was when I looked into your eyes, I realised I came from a long journey across time, before yours nor mine. I knew this from recurring dreams. They were so vivid that when I woke up, my arms my feet my body were sore and tired. These dreams were more than just a realm in my subconscious, they were real.
In my dreams, I have your eyes, your smile, and everything’s new under the sun. In my dreams I was lost looking for something, anything felt like a mother. In my dreams, I too was abandoned, unwanted. In my dreams, I was you.
You were to me my long lost son. I see you, and I see him too, in you. I wanted him to be: something you. One and the same, exactly like you, just as if he came out of copying machine. I named him after you. Now you never again have to look for something, anything like a mother.
I am here for you.
When I, My Own Daughter coming soon.
some days I got wildflowers
sprouting out
of my mouth
down my swollen chest
and there I saw the sea,
and sand in your eyes,
dripping down
of all the things
we’ve left behind.
I have so much loneliness in me, so much more than I could bear. Mother gave it to me one night the first time she was standing on the ledge near the window in our 30 stories high two bedrooms flat. She was in love with heights, so every night she took the dragons out and played with them outside by the window. She’d learn to fly. And fall.
I got so lonely everytime she did, for this grave feeling seeping through my skin, that she would fly (or fall) and would never find her way back to me (and father). She had certain ways of seeing life and death. Most of the time, to her there was no difference in both. But at times she saw death as a release and life was a cage in which one could only see what was not and could never feel what was real. What was real she saw in dreams.
She shared these dreams with me. She wrote them in a diary. Tell no one, she said to me. In her dreams, I was born into her world. I was her.
When I, My Own Daughter coming to you this spring.
a raft of hope floating at sea
but the water knows loneliness too well
and how you and i swim deep into changing currents
oh how we used to row row our boat roughly
to the unseen… and so i hurl my heart
i’d stay drowned so the water will feel me
and consume me, aren’t we all
liquids with cold cold hearts,
should we not come home already
dust to dust?
but the sun oh the sun comes
and how i long to bob out and float
and sway with the waves, they’ll find you
the wind whispers
what are we without the ocean?
who are we without this distance?
