Sometimes Forgiveness Is Swallowing A Match, 

A friend of mine wants flowers for her room, she says. 

She wants to make it beautiful and vibrant and fresh, but

Blossoms fade and petals mold, she says,

Clutching her falsified flowers, 

Petals carefully crafted—

A forgery,

hundreds of days in the making in factories where they make 

          hundreds of petals that never die.

Immortality is the prize, beauty a side effect, and yet

How many of us choose both as a goal?

-

—Immortality comes with plastic petals (y.c.)

We make gods out of sinners and altars

Out of gutters. We bow, 

Heads down in silent reverence,

To fools who beat back the nonbelievers with

violent and wrath and the pious

Call it righteous.

The gutters birth no good saviours; these

streets 

Vanquish purity the way Heracles vanquished

the lion and Perseus vanquished the

serpent but they had gods on their side 

And we have only demons.

—modern sins equate salvation (y.c.)

They’d been lulled into a false sense of security with this gentle, quiet version of him. But gentle didn’t mean safe, and quiet didn’t mean meek. The same terrifying fire burned in him still, an intense mix of unpredictability and unyielding.

— Yushan C.

There is beauty 

in the silence, in the stillness, in the gone-ness.

In the dripping water casting ripples in puddle—

who is left to see it?

In the soundless streets—

who is left to hear it?

-

There is beauty

in the empty, in the quiet, in the ghosts.

In the burning lights, haloes silver and rose—

who is left to see?

In the winding roads, snow pristine and clear—

who is left?

-

There is beauty 

in the dark, in the soft, in the peace. 

Silence is a commodity rarely found and never sought, 

An extinct creature killed by advancing times. 

There is beauty in its return; 

There is beauty in its resurrection.

-

(who is left to hear?)

-

—beauty in a time of mourning (y.c.)

Did you come from Hell,

oh Goddess?

Did you rise from brimstone and flame,

wielding words like swords?

They call you a demon

but then again,

They have always mistaken

strength for sin

when it comes to

We

who wear beauty

(like armour)

and swallow cruel words

(like bitter medicine)

— Yushan C.

I do not know how to go on 

With you, 

And I do not know how to go on 

Without you. 

This is our liminal space, our

Handcarved pocket of eternity. 

Always here and always leaving and maybe, 

in a hundred years or a few seconds, 

we will find our way out of this trap. 

.

—y.c.

Maybe I should’ve known romantic love was a lost cause

      for me when I fell 

More in love with the moon than any person; 

When my soul ached for one more minute under the stars, 

Rather than the company of someone else. 

.

Or maybe I should’ve known when the forest beckoned 

       me home—

Craggy trails and footstep-less dirt singing a siren’s song.

When disappearing into the wild seemed more right

Than handing someone my heart; 

When emerald pines and russet ground seemed a more 

         welcome place

Than someone’s embrace. 

.

Or maybe there was no way to know. 

Maybe it always would’ve been this—

the moon and the stars and the trees and the earth—

the persistent sense of wrong—

the slow discovery, the quick recovery—

Maybe, in the end, it would always have been like this.

.

—Hindsight (y.c.)

Love and despair are drawn from the same well.

I cannot always tell which is the poison,

And which is the cure.

— y.c.