i made love bigger that it needed to be
confused the edges of wanting
with the ego boost of needing to be wanted.

i made love into a caricature of past selves,
made him carry the burden of jailer and emancipator
when the ways we loved were simply
a season suspended in being painfully nineteen.
vancouver rain and lost polaroids,
beach-coloured days, mountain-breezed nights,
sun-bleached gold, autumnal orange,
winter white and cherry blossom pinks.

i made him bigger than he needed to be.
confused the ages of loving
with the ego bruise of wanting to be needed.

for the longest time i held on
to the idea that the one with the prettier tragedy
must’ve been the better lover.
in the extraordinary prose i wrote and rewrote,
i lost the texture of a boy who was kind, and warm,
as if the ordinary ways we loved meant nothing
because i couldn’t get him to say the exact words
i wanted for my poem to be complete.

i needed him to linger longer than he could have
confused the pain of losing us
with the ego crush of not being loved enough

in the intervening years, my need
for shakespearean love made him the villain
because some vanities outlive desire.
but i once had Sweet Wonder.
he called me fireworks while tracing
Youth, Summer, Freedom and Love into my skin.
he danced with me at english bay.
and for a season, he made me feel joyously alive.

i made him bigger than he needed to be.
confused the retention of metaphors
with the ego salve of loving more.

i still carry his rocket in faded lines on my wrist.
his hello changed me, and his goodbye
still shapes
all the ordinary days that will come
after him.
in the extraordinary prose i lingered over,
i think i forgot that maybe
my goodbye might have hurt him too.

Decades later, she would still stumble into the same pit of memory.

It wasn’t longing, nothing as pedestrian as that. It was the quiet bewilderment of how something that burned so briefly could continue casting such a long shadow.

A love story that ended at nineteen over a boy who could only love her the way he knew, and not the way she needed, should not still occupy any corner of a thirty-four year-old woman’s life. Yet every so often, with almost ritual precision, she found herself returning to it.

Not to relive it, but to understand it.

Time had done what time always promises to do.
The ache had dissolved.
The grief that once clung like cobwebs had long since been swept away.
Heartbreak was no longer the pit.

Something else was.

The unsettling realisation that he had loved her, just in a language she had been too young to speak.

Perhaps that was why one sentence, shared years after they had ended, refused to disappear.

I’m sorry I couldn’t love you the way you wanted.

At nineteen, she heard a rejection.
At twenty-four, she heard regret.
At twenty-eight, she understood it as an apology.
At thirty-four, she simply read it as a sentence.

She smiled sometimes at the certainty with which each younger version of herself had believed she possessed the Truth. Every time she returned to the same memories, they had rearranged themselves into a different story.

He didn’t love her enough.
He broke every rule he once had for her.
He wouldn’t fight for her.
He let her go.
When she couldn’t leave cleanly, he pushed her away.
He still answered the occasional message that drifted across oceans and time zones.

Once, each of those moments had been evidence.
Proof that he loved her. Proof that he didn’t. Proof that he never stopped.

She had mistaken interpretation for truth.

At thirty-four, she finally understood that the pit had never been him, or grief for him. The pit was who she had been at different stages.

For the girl who had believed love could only exist in the form she recognised. Anything quieter felt like absence. Anything that let go felt like indifference. Anything that respected her decision to leave felt indistinguishable from abandonment.

She can see clearly now the evidence without the emotions:
She left. Physically.
And maybe for him, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t fight for her. It was simply that she couldn’t stay.

When she lingered at the threshold, unable to decide whether leaving was what she truly wanted, he had simply closed the door for them. She sees that now for what it might have been.

Still, perhaps thirty-four is not old enough to be entirely free of ego. She wonders if perhaps that had been his final declaration of love. Somewhere inside her still remains the girl who wishes, if only once, that he had fought harder to keep her. That he had chosen her loudly enough that she never had to question it.

But ego is fleeting.

She understands now that more than one truth can exist in memory. She mourns the narrator who was unburdened by these lines, and could dive head first, feet first, into the passion of brokenness.

Who hadn’t returned to the story and found a different narrator.

But perhaps that is memory’s final mercy.
It does not preserve the past perfectly.
It just reveals who we become.

Untitled — 31 July 2026 was originally published in Excerpts for Now on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

my mind unfolds
scenarios like paper cranes — 
a thousand wings
i’m unable to set free.

what haven’t i said
into the years
between silence,
anger
and grief?

i read once
the universe closes doors
you no longer need.
maybe that’s why
the ocean between us
never touched shore.

still,
your words bleed
through my soul.
i catch you
in the margins of a crowd,
in a laugh that startles me
back into a body
that’s no longer yours.

even now,
you arrive dressed
in a stranger’s glance,
an empty glass,
a forgettable hello.

sometimes, i wonder
how your name
would sound
coming from me again — 
would it simply echo
through the abyss?

perhaps the lesson
was never love
but its ghost.

for me,
you will always be
an unanswered question.
maybe for you,
i am a bird
who fled its cage.

long after the ending,
in all the sentences i’ve deleted,
in the poems i’ve lost
to fleeting forevers,
all i carry is this:

maybe
it’s not that we failed
to love each other — 
but that pain
lingers
because it must
be felt.

Paper Cranes was originally published in the Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My soul genuflects
I find myself examining
All the pieces of “yes” and “No”
“Ok” and “maybe”
“I think it might be better” versus
“It will be more efficient”.

My heart is heavy
From the burden of having to be
Woman and worry
Of what he will say
What he will think
If I dress a certain way
Or say a certain thing.

My mind is tired
From having to pre-determine
How the consequences will dictate
What actions I may need to take
And my soul genuflects
From what I can and cannot do
Silent laws passed down generations
of women & what they’ve lived through.

I am someone’s
mother daughter sister wife
Fragments & fractals of
human being, meant to be serving
Even in my time of grief
Because my pain is not pain
Unless there is a weight attached
To how man sees and man feels.

I am a hashtag and a tagline,
A live giver and a lifeline
But never a being
With thoughts and emotions
Allowed an opinion.
I must dress a certain way
And speak in nicer tones
And smile more
Way more than I want to.

My soul genuflects;
I find myself examining
All the pieces of yes and No
Of right and wrong, of being wronged.
I am told that I am woman,
I can be bold. Yet I am told
That I am woman, I must be soft

I must contort myself
Into comfortable situations
Press myself flat against the wall
Of societal pressure and allow
Our attackers to live while we survive
Because they are promising young men
With futures ahead

A whole lifetime
Of Things to Do
Potentially important things
While I’m expected to clean up their messes
And stay silent in the wake of their actions
Because my life can’t have meaning
Until I am someone’s mother,
Someone’s wife, someone’s sister

Until he becomes a girl-father.

How to be a Woman was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One time, while I was living in China,
A white woman told me,
“Oh my god, you look like one of them
but you talk like one of us!”
and how I laughed it off.

I think about that moment a lot;
That allowance
to be “othered.”

We talk about the model minority
like there are shades to otherness
but my colonizer doesn’t see that.
He smiles patronizingly when
I speak with his accent
but doesn’t bother to learn
the language of my ancestors
in a land that his stole.

I think about how we are taught
across generations
to police our thoughts
and gentle our words
so that the colonizer doesn’t feel threatened.

I am told that this is how we beat the system.

My model minority is a majority
branded cheats & thieves
of intellectual property, with no original thought
by very original people
who parrot this rhetoric
while stealing our resources.

They are keen to let us know
that we are less than
because we live in a dictatorship,
because we do not have Freedom.
But the freedom my colonizer has
is delusion. Maybe one can only see chinks
in democracy through slanted eyes.

One time, while I was living in China,
An old Chinese man asked me,
“Where are you from?”
I think about that moment a lot.
That displacement of self
from Culture, History & Space.

I think about how I was taught
to colour myself into the lines
our colonizer has deemed Enough for us.
I think about the thoughtless jokes
we were taught to laugh off;
the caustic remarks we were told was acceptable

I think about how we are reminded
of how lucky we are to have escaped
from the persecution of skin
because of the colour of our passports.
I think about how some of us still
don’t understand the problem.

How some of us still
are willing to be “othered,”
as if we were really equals.

Otherness & Othering was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My heart is heavy with an empty grief
Full of words unsaid and things undone
For moments we’ll never have
And chances for those moments eradicated.

The emptiness stretches, prickly pain
Cloying with a grief that’s sickly sweet;
Full of cold winds and warm laughter
Memories and unnamed regrets.

I can’t describe the loneliness that stretches
From the realisation of being left behind
Of knowing that you’ll no longer be
able to just be something, ever again

The knowledge that you are gone gone
is weirdly echoey; a chamber full of nothing.
They say only the greats die young . . .
Maybe I wish you were lesser.

Our time together was short
but the moments were heavy
With well-intentioned smiles
and buoying questions.

You changed my life in ways you probably never ever imagined.
Rest In Peace A.

For A. was originally published in A Cornered Gurl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Moving on is easy.

It’s what you do between waking and sleep
in the hours that stretch
between silence and laughter
surrounded by friends
alone in a room.

Moving on is easy.
It is what happens
whether you’re aware of it or not.
It’s why so many people say
“One day I woke up”

“& I was fine.”

Because moving on is what happens
in the moments that lead
up to ephiphanies.
Moving on is the easiest thing
in the world.

It’s the letting go that’s hard.

It’s the acceptance of pain,
allowing yourself time
giving yourself permission
to grieve.
That’s hard.

So many people try
to speed up the process
with tips & tricks
but the truth is
everyone lets go

at a different place.

Some people let go in days
some people take years
others can take a whole lifetime.
But moving on?

Honey, from the moment things ended,
you began moving on.

On Letting Go was originally published in Excerpts for Now on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.