A Haiku of Words I’ll Never Say

I am in love with a boy, who
Makes me hate myself.
That boy is you.

I am terrified of losing you,
For one, you’d be gone;
I’ll also be utterly alone.

I could spend forever in this
Classroom, with you, and
Perfectly content.

I’m afraid of what would happen,
If these conversations ceased,
And I have to think again.

I spend every waking moment,
Attempting to save you.
I need to save myself first.

You said you were better,
You gave me evidence,
They weren’t reliable proof.

You love me too much,
It hurts to realise, that
I cannot reciprocate.

You are the worst thing
That’s ever happened to me.
But I cannot leave.

 

Because I am a coward, instead of talking to them, I wrote a haiku for everyone I need, and won’t, speak to. I hope you guys never find this.

A Promise

Know that in the billions of years
Of the Earth spinning around,
There has never been anything
Physically infinite.

There has never been a storm
That has not passed;
There has never been an infinite
Heatwave, ice age, landslide.

The sun will come out
Again, despite your belief.
I promise the rain will feel
Comforting again, and
You won’t need to be
Prompted to dance.

And even if you cannot
Constantly remind yourself this,
Just remember that,
There will always be someone
Offering you a hand.

Brave

Someday last week,
You told me that once
In your life, you held
A knife against your
Beating chest, and
Considered pushing
Down between your ribs.

I cried, I cried, I cried.
I cried for all the injustice
In the world, all the sorrow.
I cried for the moments that
Might have happened, and
Those that might never have.
I cried for you, for me.

I tried to imagine the days
Without you, and instead
Found a burn in my heart.

You told me you are better,
You told yourself never again,
So you ran, and did not look back.
I cried.

To my dear friend, may you only head up. 

Happiness Is Just A Word

I fell in love with a boy
Who loves to hate himself.
He buries his fears under
Laughter and smiles and
I don’t think there has ever
Been a more perfect match.

He speaks like lazy waves,
Barely hitting the sand;
He smells like home and safe,
Sundays in the sunshine;
He laughs like a child,
Contagious, condensed giggles.

He is the personification of happy,
Though sometimes I catch a little
Glimpse of the shy boy within,
Barely muffling his cries.

Red

You only began to wear red
When they told you
Death was imminent,
As if it could replace the
Colours long gone from
Your face, your skin, your life.

The final time I saw you
You were a vision in red,
Illuminated against the
Black of the night, I
Promised to the stars
I’d save you one day.

You left me
To become a star, adding
One more broken promise,
One more heart break,
To the overflow.

A Touchy Subject

I recently stumbled on this video, in which the poet criticises Ms. Rowling, author of Harry Potter, of creating a racist and stereotypical Chinese character – Cho Chang. Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with all of the points she made, I believe her view is one of the upmost importance, and one rarely acknowledged.

You see, when I was young, I had a huge passion for drama; I loved to act, and dance, I used to dream of becoming an actress. Until, I realised how low the number of Asian characters there are on my screen, there were so few, and of those present, they all fulfill either one stereotype or another; there were no genuine Asian characters. They were either in the Chinese mafia, knowing excellent Karate; or the top student of the prestigious school; or the heartbroken, weak, feeble character. I grew up, bullied into submission already, with no real, true, brown-skinned human to look up to, to believe in the future. I grew up, into a stereotype, that did not reflect any part of me at all, but it’s the way I was expected to act. People asked me how to do karate, even though I knew next to nothing. I was expected to be the top of the class, the top of the school and they were extraordinarily shocked when ‘oh wow, you’re resitting?’/'oh wow, I beat Annie!’.

I was expected to be someone out of a book, that forced brown-skinned people into submission to their white superiors, and when they realised I wasn’t, they used that to bully me. They read your books, your words; they saw your films, cartwheeled in their front garden; they were raised, not intentionally, on the ideas that we either spoke twelve languages fluently or only a broken ‘salt or vinegar?’. I am more than this. I am more than a stereotype. I am more than a broken stereotype, one based on your imagination, false accusations, and flat lies.  Instead, I live in fear of you. I fear that one day, you will use the colour of my skin to judge me, rather than the qualities of my character or the cells in my brain; I fear everyday for my future, and the future of my children, born to a world expecting them to live a life of lies.

The thing is, you do try your best at racial diversity. I see far more black characters in the media than before; every child knows the revolutionary stories of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. However, you do not realise that by doing this, you are further shoving Asian people into that tiny corner that we do not speak about. Black people are celebrated, they are in the history books, they are taught to children who will rule the world one day, but what about us, what about me? The only thing I hear is the corruption of communism; the deadly greed forcing China into deeper depths of hell than before, when will I hear of the good stuff? When will I hear of a community coming together to face natural disasters, when will I hear of how far the Chinese have come since those days in dry, barren land? When will I hear of stories, both good and bad, of Asia so the adults of the future can make an informed judgement on how they want to treat me, instead of opinions plastered on them the moment they popped out the womb.

Imagine a nine-year old, forced to choose a new dream because of something she could not control.

I grew up, wishing my skin was lighter, because maybe only then, they’d stop giving me ‘happy slaps’ every lunch time.
(Hint: they were not happy)

Two Ambulances

The first, a low-key affair,
The gentleman rocks in
A restless trance.
The only sound is a
Murmuration of padded feet.
Surely he must wake any
Second now.
Any second now.
Now.

The second runs, transporting
More blood than life.
The stretcher clashes loudly
Against the bright linoleum floor.
The distraught wife screams
With the pain of life, loss.
Moments that never were,
And never will be.