I Hate the Rain

i hate rain,
the sound of leaves being hit
all at once
like a constant tide
crashing in cacophony.

the annoying white noise
in the black night
vexes me,
and i find it frustratingly odd
how the grey cement
is a darker shade of grey
when rain drives by.

and how strange our sunrays look,
dressed in an admittedly becoming
frock of clouds.

i tolerate
the feeling of droplets on my skin,
like a soothing massage for which
i did not ask,
and i walk uncaringly
with my hair wet
but only because
my hair is easier to manage
damp than dry.

the beautiful autumn leaves,
now soaked with nature's tears
can't be crumpled,
and i so enjoy crumpling them,
even as i enjoy their beauty
strewn across my path
like the Earth's own stars
in endless constellations.

falling leaves are shooting stars
waiting to be wished,
so i wish upon a falling leaf,
who joins its brothers on the ground,
and in my wishing, i believe,
a quiet solace i have found.

the drizzle turns into
an endless stampede of tiny horses
rushing onto the floor and trees,
and upwards i look,
soaking it all in.

my wish for clarity
has been answered.

and at night,
with my window open,
the rain reminds me of the ocean,
with the leaves a-pitterpatter
in quiet, calming tidal breaking,
but that beach and surf surrounds me
and for once i am part of nature's nature.

and
i suppose,
i may love my rain after all.

Andrew's Short Story (Part 4)

Read Part 1 and then Part 2 and then Part 3.

For the next few months after meeting Vivian twice, Andrew saw her sparingly. They had mutual friends and they saw each other at church a few times, but it was nothing serious. She was in town for college, but in addition, her parents had also moved back, so the family was still getting used to the Bay Area. Andrew was more than happy to take Vivian to places that had sprung up since she moved away, or that she had never known in the first place. His dates with her were platonic, but he always got ready for them as if they were romantic.

I wish I could say that after a year or two of Andrew and Vivian mostly minding their own business while still getting coffee or lunch monthly, they began to come closer to love, but that’s not quite truthful. They drifted apart naturally. Hanging out once a month became once every other month, a couple of times a year, and by the end of four years, they had stopped being friends and shifted their relationship in between “acquaintances” and truly “friends.” It is the purgatory you put dozens of people you know, but it is a purgatory wherein they have also placed you. This mutual purgatory enrollment is a natural passing of time. As social as we can be, it is unreasonable to sustain emotional involvement with as many people as we often wish. Andrew and Vivian were something more than acquaintances, but something much less than friends. It was also something that happened with their tacit consent.

It’s a pattern with Andrew. He isn’t a go-getter, a goal-grabber or any other alliterative and hyphenated term that reminds people of broken dreams. Once he sniffs defeat, he acquiesces. He wanted to be an actor once, but he faced reality and settled for a major in engineering. He wanted to be a writer, too, but found that his works lacked the quality he expected of others. He wanted to be with Vivian, to care for her, to hold her and do all those things he supposed were standard in a loving relationship. He wanted so many things, but when it seemed highly unlikely, he decided to take the safer route. Better to avoid defeat and remain undefeated.

This, however, held no bearing on his personality. He was as charming as a garden snake in Eden, but his fall from grace would not stifle his joy in life one bit. He accepted all of life, the good and the bad, and believed heartily and merrily that things will just somehow work out. He is naïve, but he knows it and doesn’t care. It’s easier not to care about your shortcomings than to deal with them, and at the very least, his positive qualities outnumbered his negative ones, in his mind. He didn’t consider that while they may outnumber his negative qualities, they may not outweigh them.

Actually, he did, but it was much later than the time period we’re talking about now, which is a few years after he met Stacy. I mean Vivian. I have no idea who Stacy is. Sorry.

Remember what I said about Andrew not always accomplishing his goals? It applies to his writing. This story began with Andrew’s story, and a few years later, he had not even finished that story. He still had no idea where he was going with it. Did he want it to be autobiographical? Partially autobiographical? Or should he make up new characters from scratch? He had little to no experience drawing up characters. The ones he created were so shallow. He didn’t know how to tell a story. How was he going to write this thing?

He wrote anyway.

“One of the problems with farts is that they smell only sometimes. If you get too comfortable with farting, you are setting yourself up for bad times. Not only will you be unable to detect the stench of your farts eventually, but when you do release a genuine stinker, you won’t be able to predict it. In reality, no one can predict with absolute certainty if farts are going to smell or not, but in some cases, deductive reasoning can narrow it down, similar to weather forecasts.

For example, if you’ve had beans or cheese, both known to produce quite smelly farts, there is a greater chance that the fart you experience within the next few hours will smell. Another way to predict farts is to fart just once. If that fart smells, it is best to refrain from farting afterwards, unless the intended effect is to leave the air smelling like your shit. If that fart does not smell, however, it might mean your other farts may not smell either. Be warned, though, that those acclimated to their farts will be the least able to predict the rancidity of their flatulence.”

It was rubbish, a word Andrew only used in his writing and thoughts but never aloud because it sounds ridiculous if not said in a variant of a British accent. He had no idea what he was writing about. He was only thinking of stuff to write that he experienced at that moment. And it was at that moment that Andrew had an epiphany. I have no idea what it was, but I’m sure it was good. Probably something to do with his writing. Either that or farts.

The Plural of Urethra is Urthrae

I can make you cringe,
Or, for some of you, laugh.
Just think of holes being cut
in your urethra.

It's a painful thought,
and one from which you're
probably detaching
right now.

Too bad.
Think about it again.
Think about breaking your forearm,
So it looks like
you have two elbows.

Think about
Biting your tongue,
not like holding back your words,
but really
biting your tongue
in half.

It's gross and painful.

It's funny how we attach so much
to how painfully it affects our body,
but most among us
would feel any of these pains
not to lose the someone we love.

Except for the urethra one, maybe.
That one sounds awful.
I mean, you just don't mess
with urethrae.
You shouldn't anyway.

But for the most part,
we'd take a lot of physical pain
to keep our emotional pain at bay.

We might
bite
our tongues,
and in doing,
bite our tongues.

Our blood will save our love.

I don't know why we do it,
And I don't know if I want to do it.

But I will.
I will.

Andrew's Short Story (Part 3)

The party continued for a few hours before Vivian’s parents decided to leave. They had introduced themselves to the Trans, thanked them, and promised to visit soon. Andrew, however, did not trust this, and asked for Vivian’s number. When he put his mind to it, he could accomplish the most surprising of things.

“Uh, sure,” Vivian replied reluctantly when he asked her. She felt comfortable around him, a feeling she did not feel too often among strangers, especially not at funerals.

“Oh,” Andrew said when he looked over her number. “Are you from Massachusetts?”

“Yeah, I was born here, but we moved over there about six years ago. I’m back here for college,” she replied. And a funeral, she added in her thoughts.

“I was born in Worcester!” Andrew replied, smiling as he always does.

“Oh,” Vivian said politely. There was only a split second of silence, and Andrew, always the quickest to detect awkwardness, saved the soon-to-be palpable awkward pause.

“I’ll text you when Father Joe visits me next time,” he said deftly. Vivian chuckled, and said, “Okay, sounds good. It was nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

The second time Andrew met Vivian was a chance encounter at the local mall a few weeks later. He saw her walking out as he was walking toward the theater. He smiled as he recognized her smile.

“Hey!” he greeted her.

“Oh, hey!” she said. “I replied to your text about the visions. It took you long enough to tell me.” Privately, Vivian was still mourning the death of Father Joe, and had hoped Andrew would provide some lightness to get her mind off the sadness. She was smart enough to know that death would be a common motif in life, but that knowledge did not abate her sadness. Facts do not always provide closure in the way that faith sometimes does.

“I’m sorry,” said Andrew. “He visited me that night we met and said you were an awesome girl, but I just forgot to text you about it until yesterday. I’m not very reliable at delivering news.”

She laughed, and he felt forgiven even if she did not forgive.

“Remind me never to wait on you again,” she said.

There was something about her ability to reply so surely, her conviction, her –

“Are you Mexican?” he asked her abruptly.

“Half,” she answered, mildly taken aback by his sudden curiosity. “I’m half-Mexican, half-Columbian. My Spanish is terrible, and if I spoke it fluently, it would still sound terrible.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Mexican Spanish sounds terrible to everyone else. There’s usually more slang and informal usage. Columbian Spanish is beautiful. The two accents put together would probably be a bastardization of the language that only I could accomplish, so it’s a good thing I haven’t set my mind to it.”

“That’s how I am with Vietnamese, too,” he said. “Northern and Southern dialects all jammed into one confused tongue. When Vietnamese kids ask if I’m from the North or South, I just tell them I have one parent from both. I don’t even know what kind of Vietnamese I am, let alone Vietnamese-American. It’s weird.”

The thing Andrew and I have in common is that we’re both procrastinators. He took a long time to text back Vivian, and I took a long time to disclose that Andrew was Vietnamese and Vivian was half-Mexican, half-Columbian, or as Andrew would later say to no one but himself, Mexlumbian.

“Why do you ask?” she asked.

“I was just curious,” he replied. “Are you busy? I’m gonna movie-hop right now, and I think I’m going alone.”

“That’s so sad!” she replied. She was right. It’s pretty sad.

Andrew laughed, confident in his plans.

“It’s better than watching a Transformers sequel with other people,” he retorted.

“Do you watch movies alone often?”

“Sometimes. I like movies, so the company doesn’t always matter.”

“Then I don’t want to ruin your solo date.”

“Maybe being alone is better than hanging out with you!”

She scoffed, playing along. “You haven’t even hung out with me yet!”

“That’s why I said ‘maybe.’”

“So you admit that my company is possibly better than your own company to yourself?”

He rolled his eyes leftwardly and upwardly and furrowed his brow. “It’s possible,” he said carefully.

“As long as you know that you could have potentially had a better time, then I’m okay with that. I’ll see you around. By the way, Father Joe came to me in a vision, and said you’re full of shit.”

“He was always a wise man, that Father Joe,” Andrew chuckled.

She laughed.

“I’ll see you around, though, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning around to go. “But don’t wait on me.”

It would have been perfect, thought Andrew a moment after he turned around, if she had said, “I won’t,” and smiled knowingly as we parted.

But she didn’t, so Andrew had to settle for an uneventful goodbye, a normal goodbye, a real one.

Originally

I was born speaking Vietnamese,
And when I started school
I was not American.

So I learned English,
And when I came home,
I was no longer Vietnamese.

So I went back to school,
To talk to my friends,
But that didn't make me American.

They ask me,
"Where are you from?"
"Santa Clara," I reply.
"No," they insist. "Originally."
"I am Vietnamese," I tell them,
Saving myself from the unneeded, diabolical dialogue.

"Where are you from?"
"Where are you from?"

I know the answer they seek
Because I've answered it my entire life,
And in answering,
I have learned how not to answer it.

They ask me,
"Where are you from?"
"California," I reply.
"No, where were you born?" they insist.
"Massachusetts," I say.

Their questions shoot from the barrels of their throats,
Each tonal shift of interrogation a bullet
that I deftly avoid.
I am a buffalo, and my life is open season.

"Where are your parents from?" they shoot.
"They met in Philadelphia," I dodge.

"I am Vietnamese," is the answer they want to hear,
so I give it to them eventually,
But it is not my answer.

I cannot answer a question
that I don't know.

I was born speaking Vietnamese,
And when I started school
I was not American.

So I learned English,
And when I came home,
I was no longer Vietnamese.