wishes from separate skies

I tell myself you’re where you’re meant to be

with the elephants and the lake that floods and the mangrove trees spilling their muddy roots deep, deep down

with the sweat and the bats and the gumboots

with sun that rises when my moon is dawning.

I tell myself you’re where you’re meant to be although my heart says ‘I want you here, here, here.’

I tell myself I’m where I’m meant to be

but it’s much harder to believe.

I’m learning, sure.

I’m growing deeper, wiser, but not brighter.

I’m struggling to accept the darkness while knowing one day there will be light.

I’m watching dandelions burst out over entire fields of new grass

fighting to believe their promise of hope.

I’m reading blog post after blog post written by old students and knowing you’re not reading mine.

I’m searching for pictures of you because I haven’t seen your face in oh so long.

I hear your laugh in my dreams and I hold on like it could keep me afloat.

I’m tired of treading water

but I’m unwilling to let myself drown

or drift away to somewhere else

because anyplace without you isn’t worth going to.

I hope you’re happy because of course that’s what I want for you

but sadness still fills the space you left behind.

is it so wrong to hope that perhaps the space I left still aches inside of you?

in this screwed up world part of me wishes something will always be broken

until we find our way to the same soil.

I don’t care if it’s night or day, humid or dry, raining or blazing, Khmer or English

I just want to hear you say, ‘I’ll try.’

because my heart never wants to leave yours behind

no matter how many times dusk and dawn fill our separate skies.

my dream is the same: from As Cool as I Am

“‘Hey, I got your postcard.’
‘Yeah, well, just because I send you a postcard every day doesn’t mean I think about you all the time.’
‘That would be blatantly pathetic.’
‘Yeah, yeah, even for me. I had this dream where we were at the jungle gym.’
‘Wait, I’m confused. I thought that was real life.’
‘No, no… listen. In the dream, we started at the jungle gym, and we walked in opposite directions until we met on the other side of the world. And then I thanked you for always having my back.”’

 

I heard you laughing

I am dreaming.

I am next to you, in a circle, playing Apples to Apples, with a group of other people whose names I do not remember, whose faces I do not see.

My arm is draped over your leg. You are warm.

I can feel that we are still estranged, yet we are here. I do not know why, but I am grateful.

I am explaining the card I have played, defending it wildly, with ridiculous reasoning. This, as always, is part of the game.

And you laugh.

And it hits me like a freight train and fills me up and part of me, the non-dreaming conscious slumbering inside, recognizes I haven’t heard this laugh in a long, long time. Your laugh.

I am so, so, so glad to hear you laugh.

And by golly, even in this dream, for once, it sounds exactly like your laugh. It is your laugh. And I’m smiling, keeping on with my explanation, making it sillier because I just want to hear you laugh again, keep you laughing, because it’s the best sound in the world.

I can feel my sped-up heartbeat, pumping away.

I am thinking, I am so, so glad to hear your laugh.

It’s been too long.

Way too long.

And it’s amazing.

You’re amazing.

And I can feel my heartbeat and I can almost hear it and everything else fades away and it’s just my heartbeat, my heartbeat, my heartbeat and I wake up to Easter morning with this gift in my heart that I didn’t have before.

I thank God for your laugh.