pray

the deepest sighs
of the heart
sometimes it's a struggle
when we first start

to wrap our needs
up in words
and trust that somehow
we will be heard

draw near, and know you are loved
God hears, and His heart is touched

pray, when the road is steep
pray, when you're hope gets weak
know the Father hears through
the silence and the tears you
pray, when you don't know how
pray, heaven's waiting now
and Jesus is just a breath away

pray.

unrelenting residues

sew this up with threads of reason and regret
so i will not forget. i will not forget
how this felt one year six months ago i know
i cannot forget. i cannot forget.

i may have forgotten how to knot a tie
i may have forgotten how to do that last layer of the rubik's cube
but the rest,
i can't seem to forget.
i cannot forget.

do you want me to forget?

hey, jealousy

how can something that once instilled in me so much joy
now be the perpetrator of so much sorrow.

i feel so distracted.
i feel so sad.

i need chocolate.

i need to pick my head up.

i'm reaching my hand to Yours
believing there's so much more
knowing that all You have in store for me is good

red follows green

red follows green as my frustration ripens and threatens to explode into forbidden utterances. so many noises. just shut up.shutup. i can't freaking yawn. what the heck. i've had a sneeze obnoxiously stemmed by my un-cooperative body but a yawn? come on. i didn't even know that was possible. i feel so freaking claustrophobic and trapped in my nonexistant yawn and i can't break out of it in a sweet freaking release. letting go is freaking hard. i can't seem to freaking let go of you. why does everyone around me swear so much? red follows green conquering one leaf at a time, setting trees ablaze to distract from the chill that has crept into the air. but only one tree has a head of red, it's completely and utterly yielded to the conquest but no other tree around it. what's the deal? don't fruit ripen faster when they're with other fruit? and don't girls who live together start sharing a cycle? i feel so antsy and restless and all over the place and miserable and frustrated and sad. why only that tree? i relate to that tree. i don't know why. i just feel such firy turmoil in my heart, in my head. do i feel lonely? i don't even know. maybe. maybe if all the noise would stop i could figure out if i were lonely. great there's a lot of different types of cheeses. normally, i'm all for cheese. i'd even go so far to say i love cheese, but i don't want to hear it right now. i want to think. clearly, i'm not doing much thinking or organizing and i'm just doing this ridiculous finger stream of conscious therapy that really isn't very therapeutic i'm just getting even more riled up. red follows green in subsequent blinks, chasing each other around the evergreen. red and green. i never did like that secondary-primary color combination. my favorite would be purple and yellow, followed by blue and orange-but only if it's a light blue and yellow-heavy orange, not a red-heavy orange. red and green is definitely my least favorite. no matter what shade of red and what shade of green, no combination really does it for me. but i'll love any color on christmas. i just want christmas to come and shanghai to surround me once more. the noise has stopped and my fingers stalled but not my thoughts, my thoughts keep reeling without a backward glance. red follows green and everything stops.

why won't everything stop-please, just stop.

this weekend

it was so good seeing your faces
it was so sweet hearing your voice

but oh how much better
but oh how much sweeter
it was to see Your face
to hear Your voice

for i know the plans i have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and i will listen to you. you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. i will be found by you and will bring you back from captivity.

take my love; my Lord, i pour
at thy feet its treasure-store

as i stare at this space and think about all the love, all the passion, all the fears and frustration that tag along, the voice i adore, the smile i melt for, the words that i crave, i feel all this anxiety, all this asd;fka;sldkfjl and it's building up and swelling and swelling and freaking swelling until i can't breathe under the weight of this black glob of human passion and the ugliness of my inability to describe the sheer measure of this love i'm trying to let go of. i'm not giving up on love, no, i'm giving it up to You.

it's all for You
i'm letting go
i'm letting go.

and i am ready for Your life
and i am ready for You now.

leaves

what a tragically apt name-
it's inevitable,
at the end of its season,
it leaves the tree.

oh, parting is such sweet sorrow.

home, sweet home

it's true what they say:
absence makes the heart grow fonder.
but even more than that,
it brings about clarity and helps the heart shed its vague indecision.

eighteen years and i've finally figured it out:
shanghai is home.

i just had to leave in order to find it.

just ask the leaves

imported from facebook.

"there is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven..
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away"
ecclesiastes 3:1,6



a time to hold on and a time to let go.
just ask the leaves.

one foot too many

a wise and beloved friend of mine once told me,

"the feeling of being swept off your feet is nothing compared to the feeling of caring about someone so much that you don't give a damn about where your feet are."

except, i'd just prefer it if they were right next to yours.

take your time

don't jump,
i'm not ready.

don't fall,
it'll hurt.

i don't know what i want yet.

breathe in for luck

imported from facebook.

i'm starting to think that love no longer sweeps in like a whirlwind,
but rather, meek and unnoticed, passed over as something seemingly ordinary,
like a breath, and you just gotta keep breathing in and out,
and in,
and out,

and that will make all the difference.

breathe in so deep.

last one standing

there's something wrong with this picture:
my feet are still very much firmly planted on the ground.

i've never been swept off my feet.

this realization is incredibly depressing considering the number of guys i've fallen for
so what made me fall all those times? what was the mysterious force behind my multitude of crash and burns?

this is the first time i've really stopped to think about this sad, sad truth
maybe they liked me first, but looking back, i don't even think i can give them credit for that much.
and even if they did, i was right there liking them back, and they didn't have to do any sweeping or pursuing or convincing or coercing.
and as much as i hate to admit it, more often than not,
i made the first move-
i took the subtle initiatives to nudge a developing relationship on and set the ball rolling on its grueling trajectory.

and i know it's old fashioned to expect guys to do all the pursuing
and maybe it's too romantic an idea: "being swept off your feet"
maybe it's too disney, too hollywood
maybe it's simply a relic of the past
and people don't get swept off their feet anymore
maybe love no longer sweeps in like a whirlwind, but rather, meek and unnoticed, passed over as something seemingly ordinary, like a breath, and you just gotta keep breathing in and out and in and out, and that will make all the difference.

and sure, "good for me," i know what i want, and i pursue it
but it's not a product of confidence as it may seem,
it's insecurity.

the fact of the matter is,
you can't be pursued unless you're running
and my insecurity never allows me to run,
in case the guy doesn't care enough to follow after,
and often times, i feel like they're not ready to give chase,
we gotta take a few more baby steps,
i gotta lead them by the hand and coax them into letting me a little deeper into their heart.
and if i have to do any coaxing or convincing or any of this subtle facilitation,
my feet will keep hitting the ground step after step.

and the times my feet leave the ground
it's because i jumped.

confrontation

every time i read postsecret,
i'm reminded how short life is,
how fleeting beauty is,
how elusive love is,
and above all:
how it's all worth it.

i feel like we're standing on the edge of something big.
take a leap of faith with me.
either let me love you,
or let me let go.

but it's so hard to let go when letting go of you
means letting go of parts of myself-
the pieces of me,
my heart, my words, my identity,
that i've entrusted to you.

is there even still something left to let go of
or has denial and neglect taken care of it?

no.
i know there's still something
i still feel something
and i'm unable to believe that you don't

dammit, i feel so frustrated with everything that's unspoken
it's always been this way
but the distance has just exacerbated it
why can't i find the words whenever it comes to you
and me

meanwhile, i have all the words in the world to capture the dining hall's serenade of flavors resounding in a symphony of gluttony

we've lost it already haven't we...
is it even worth it, this struggle for words
when the subject i so long to define is nonexistant?
maybe that's why i struggle so

in yet another round of tug-of-war with silence,
i feel my words slipping out of my grasp in a blaze of raw pain.

i think i love you
and to tell you the truth,
i'm scared.

chris

that space belongs to everything i can't bring myself to say to you
everything i don't know how to say
i start email after email, but i can never finish
i hardly even get past your name
and so i duck behind a cover of silence and ambiguity
not because i've moved on or forgotten
but because i'm scared to let you see that i haven't

but i can see the words that belong there
i know them all by heart

considerably blue

when i wring out my blue wash cloth,
the water that trickles down is still tinted blue
this disturbs me considerably

when i wring my hands, standing on the brink of a daydream
your name is still the first thing on my mind
like a reflex, like a bad habit, like an old friend
this saddens me considerably

yesterday

you, i got to talk on the phone with for an hour
you, i got to walk the aisles of target with
meanwhile, you're fading
and i'm torn

do i try to remember-
find the vague shadows of you in my mind
and lead you by the hand back into my heart,
or do i revel in this unintentional release..

catch me?

how could a girl not fall for you,
how do i even stand a chance.