keeper of things.

creative bug love bites: I think I got bit, and with a summer with not much to do, can I maybe, perhaps, kinda, sorta, begin daydreaming of my eventually book? Here’s to beginnings:

When he broke your elbow, I learned the sound of how bones cracked. And how the weight of the metal spoon pushed against my tongue, pinched into the insides of gums and cavity-filled teeth hidden in the back of a quiet mouth. I learned how to bite hard enough to still crying. I learned the sound of how not to speak. The sound of how not to make any. The sound of how bones cracked. And how glass clinked. And how saliva sings down throats. And how standing on the other side of the door leaves a shadow louder than how bones cracked when parents fall out of love. 

When he broke your elbow, I was too young to remember. I am still too young to remember. I want to remember myself as three years old, that magical age where young girls still believed in fairy tales and falling in love without really believing any of it because we were too young to really understand what believing means. Or what it takes to believe in something. Anything. When he broke your elbow, I want to remember myself as three years old, or four years old, an age where not remembering is okay, an age where crying over broken doll pieces is okay, an age where not crying over being alone in a dark room is okay because you believe in not seeing how parents fall out of love without even believing that you believed in falling to begin with. 

When he broke your elbow, I was the only daughter, which meant that when we broke our family, not much would have to be negotiated. Just me. How arguments and claims mapped onto my three or four-year-old body, I’m not sure. I still don’t know much about my dad, but from the pieces my mother would accidentally let slip time to time, he was a selfish man. He was a man who didn’t have a job, but left every morning precisely at 8am as if he worked, as if he was doing something important, as if he was someone who could hold his family up. He was a man who traveled across time & hunger from a city in China I’ve walked through but never stayed through. He was a man who owned a face like the moon’s crater, where small forehead wrinkles seemed to hold hints of life if you stared closely and for too long. He was a man who wore jeans and brown corduroy pants that were always a little too long for his average height. He was a man who didn’t wear jackets in early spring when the air still chilled hands. He was a man who wanted to feel sunshine on his skin to warm his hands. He was a man who met my mother in their early twenties. He was a man who fell in love with my mother. A man who my mother fell in love with. But he was a selfish man. 

When he broke your elbow, you didn’t cry. You told me how he was a selfish man and didn’t cry in the separation. When you told me about his selfish habits, of how he counted pennies like single grains of rice in hungry anger and when one penny or one grain was missing, he would yell at you, interrogate you, stare at you the way lovers promised never to do. And when you explained to him that you gave one hundred dollars allowance to your parents—my grandparents—he continued staring at you, harder, in hungrier anger. You explained that refugee love tied us all together, that your parents couldn’t support themselves after running away and leaving everything they knew and understood behind in Laos, that refugees starved more often after resettlement than during wars and camps, that it was a different kind of starvation. It wasn’t hunger. It was hungrier. But he was a selfish man hungrier than most. You often tried to explain that refugee families were a different kind of family, that your six other siblings could barely love away their children’s hunger, working double jobs and overtime in factories and garages. This kind of love drained refugee families so that all that was left was just, refugee. You tried to explain that you were the lucky one that you were the backbone that you were and have always been the bigger pocket that safe kept this refugee family. You tried to explain that the money belonged to you anyway, holding up the wrinkled scars and stitched patterns imprinted inside and between your palms from massaging fabric into clothes. That he didn’t have a job that he couldn’t hold this family up or your family that you always had the bigger pocket. That one hundred dollars for every three months was almost nothing compared to the sacrifices for every day your parents offered up to the Pathet Lao, the camp guards, the sometimes sneaky neighbors, the resettled life, the firefly skies. One hundred dollars for your parents and six siblings and too many nieces and nephews in three months while he counted and stared and stared. And when you tried to explain that you wanted to treat the little one to chocolate for her third or fourth birthday or that she was outgrowing her salmon dotted dress, he stared. You could never win, and he stared. And when you thought I was old enough to understand all this, I stared. When he broke your elbow, you kept the scar in your bigger pocket, explaining all of this to me, all the while looking away. You stared, but in the other direction.  

When he broke your elbow, you looked away from his face, in the other direction, as if your eyes suddenly lost their way when his hands suddenly lost their way and found themselves striking against you. I’ve been trying to unlearn the sound of how bones crack and I’ve been trying to unhear the silence that follows. I wonder where you’re looking at or what you’re looking for as you explain this to me. I wonder if you’re looking for the apology that somehow lost its way like how families often do and I wonder if you think that being lost means being found someday. You look at me and tell me that in every story, there’s always a but. That when he broke your elbow, apologies got lost because he was always the kind of man that smoothed your tired hands at the end of the day, the kind of man who carried all the groceries while still managing to hold your hands, the kind of man who shared secret kisses on your cheeks while washing the dishes together, the kind of man who made sure you walked on the inside of the walkways in case cars too, lost their way. You explained to me the sweetness found in the crater of his forehead wrinkles, that he was moon enough when the lights turned off and sheets were lifted. There’s always a but that keeps every part connected like how you loved him but you loved your refugee family more or how you wanted to stay with him but couldn’t stay through him or how you weren’t sure if you could leave him but he broke your elbow. We all didn’t see it but we all heard the bone cracking. You tried to explain to me that as his daughter, he was a good man that when I forgot to share my sticky rice with my cousins, it wasn’t him. But I’m his daughter I must be like him, and you would explain that we’re a different kind of family, that sometimes, families get lost from each other, that I’m a good daughter, that he was just lost and will be lost for a very long time. When he broke your elbow, you held me tighter with your other arm, but I still somehow, got lost.

When he broke your elbow, I started to believe in falling. 

i-don’t-know-where-to-begin update.

Somewhere along the way, I went from actually writing my thoughts, concerns, perceptions, and random sights to just reblogging other people’s thoughts (which is cool) but I always have a lot of thoughts I want to share. I just don’t know how. 

I also got busy, I guess. But what’s new. Life keeps us all pretty busy anyway, but the more busy we get, the more capable we are of handling things and the more time we have, the more we daydream about things we should be handling, but aren’t. 

Anyway, finals are over for me! I’m free for the summer except for my “volunteering” in the mornings (it’s actually a paid position but I get paid so little I consider it volunteering) and job applications. My goal for the summer is to write, like how I use to, but not like how I use to. In some ways, I’d like to think I’ve adapted and rescripted myself, but maybe not. I’m going to try and post something on this tumblr everyday, or every other day, or every other other day. I’m also going to try and be better about keeping in touch with my friends and family. I’m definitely going to try working on my personal projecks that I started in a whole other lifetime, but have yet to make a move on. Definitely more art (in whatever form, including food art!). And to top it all off, definitely more reading—both for fun and for growth. 

(By the way, to everyone who’s read/reading EL James book, props to you in some disgusting and distorted way. I started reading it, got really hooked, then it just became too overwhelming. I feel violated as a woman, which I think is fair to say unless you really are into that, then I make no passes.)

To sum up too many things in the past couple of months: things have been rough. When I say things are barely holding together, and I’m trying to do everything I can to hold things together, I’m being almost literal. But, good news is that I’m okay with it. I just have to be there for the right person and know that at the end of the day, barely holding together still means holding together in whatever small and fragile way. I’m okay with it. 

Another big move, my gramps had heart surgery two weeks ago. Big deal for a grandpa his age with a history of leukemia and other various sicknesses. But he’s such a resilient and amazing person. Fought through that shit and came out a champ! Sometimes fought too hard though because he often refused to take painkillers when he was obviously in pain. Something about feeling alive and knowing that he made it through. My gramps and I are bounded by so much history and memories, that I think, set him and I apart from him and his other grandkids (which may not be fair to say). He raised me when I was younger. I was the only girl he ever carried. I took him to his chemotherapy sessions and doctor’s visits and ICU recoveries. I stayed with him and he stayed with me after knowing that I had to grow up the way I did. And I do, I really do want him to walk me down the aisle and give me away (but shit’s too complicated for me to plan weddings, let alone marriages). Anyway, while I was staying with him in the ICU, he turned to me while he was slurping his chicken noodle soup (the only thing he could stomach), where I was sitting next to him. He held up all ten fingers and said, “Connie, gramps is going to live for another ten years.” And he looks away for a little, then looks back at me and says, “I’m going to hold your children.” I really really had to push my tears back inside of myself, so I just smiled without saying anything in case my voice cracked. 

Now I want to have a kid, just so my gramps can hold his great-grandchild even though I still don’t believe in marriage. 

Or the pain of pushing a baby out of my vajayjay.