Mon Petite Palais

Just a weekend getaway

Endless missions lasted the day

The perfect mix of buttery air

Another round of rainbow elixir

In between the clouds and lawn

Memories amassed from dusk to dawn

Ethereal joy captured, 

!n moins de 438 still frames

He’s just not that into you.

Now it all makes sense
A beautiful misunderstanding
Cleared, at last.

I fell in love a couple times in the past,
But this is the first time I love
in a patient, kind, humble,
always protects, always trusts, always hopes
kind of way.

And it has not been easy, knowing that
I’m in love with the shadow of a man
who is still loving the ghost of his girl
the One and Only, their Forever and Always.

Who is never able to love me back,
the way I longed to be loved.
There is no room left
for me.
No more confusion or mixed signals.
It is as simple as that.

But what is disappointment,
if not for the presence of hope?
And hope is the thing with feathers.

I will survive,
yet another heart shattering.
Because I have done so,
more often than I’ve hoped.

You and I don’t live on the same planet

You and I don’t live on the same planet.
Yours is gloomy, cold and wet,
thunderstorms day after night.
Mine is warm and breezy,
sky so blue lined with a rainbow or two.

You live under the shadow where darkness consumes all;
I bathe in the morning beams at its perfect temperature.
And when it gets dark over here, sure it does get rather dim 
the bright moonlight still shines above.

All you see is suffering and pain
Yet, when I look around, there is kindness and hope.
Yours is filled with hatred and skepticism, 
so much anger and distrusts, 
erupting from the volcanoes, 
lava forming atop all things bright and beautiful

But on mine, we chose love and faith
over jealousy and hate.
Our oceans generous and benevolent,
It knows no discrimination and holds no grudges.
With every wave, it disperses and dissolves our resentment.
Where I’m from, we welcome all mankind and embrace our differences.
There is acceptance and forgiveness, sympathy and compassion. 

Therefore with a tender heart and open arms, 
I ask that you join me, migrate to my planet.
Pack light and leave all burdens behind you,
We are off to a new start;
where we create a future for all, 
an inclusive place where we respect one another, 
guided by gratitude and humility.
You and I don’t live on the same planet, 
just yet.


Inspired by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum Exhibition, in light of the recent social instability 
2021 Jan

Today I’m a bird

I am free as a bird

No more strings tangled onto my wings

No cage whatsoever trapping me in

I will keep flapping my wings

– Fly! Up and high!

Soar even further as the next gust takes me over the clouds

I will end up wherever I happen to be

I will always remember just how happy this makes me, even just the thought of it

So look up, look closely,

because I am nothing more than one of the wings flying over

Chasing Rainbow

Out of the blue

I appeared in your life

as confetti

falling from the sky

Naked and true

Just bits and pieces of me

Primary colours

Of natural dye

Without a clue

Mere sprinkle

Paper thin and frail

aimlessly drifting by

Razzle dazzle spectacle!

But the number 1 rule

Is that the element of surprise

is never meant to stay

No matter how we try

You always remember the entrance

A promise of hope and joy

but one with an expiry

that neither you or I

ever get to keep any

however little a piece or shred so tiny

Glitter and gold

Shinning shimmering

Blink once

dancing papers disappeared

Blink twice –

I am long gone too

But I do hope you think of me

whenever confetti fall from the sky

Or when you are in a zoo

A letter to my (yet to come) travel companion for life

Dear travel companion,

Someday
We will curse our delayed flight in the airport lounge together
You will lift my luggage onto the overhead compartment
I will slide into my window seat while your long legs take up the aisle
We will compete for the smile of the baby on the opposite row
You will laugh at me crying over the same scene in La La Land the 10th time
I will not even ask for a blanket because I can snuggle up against your chest

And when we land…
We will name our convertible rental car before going on the road
Get tanned while floating in the Dead Sea
Get lost in Venice until the sun sets

Have breakfast with giraffes at Niger
Be dazzled by the jazz band at Peace Hotel Shanghai
Watch musicals after musicals in Broadway New York or London
Suffer altitude sickness in Tibet or Peru or Bolivia…
Scroll along the river Seine or Thames or Danube…
I don’t even care
As long as you are here

But until I find you, I’ll be a Lone Ranger.

Lots of love and anticipation,
Rach

Let’s call it a day

The best kind of getting off of work

is to finish the To Do list just in time

Crossing off that one last item in line

The best kind of getting off of work

is the intense aroma of food court

Simulating scrumptious hungry thoughts

The best kind of getting off of work

is that special Spotify playlist blasting

melodies infinite and everlasting

The best kind of getting off of work

is when the sun is only half way down

Caught it, before the darkness drown

A spontaneous tea party

Perfectly ordinary breakfast tea
poured into a pair of teal tea cups
made of ordinarily perfect bone china
with a swirl (two if you’re weak) of milk.
Splitting an almost heavenly cinnamon roll
after a ravishing double act in perfect unison-

A mere civil and common ritual to
restore balance after the most feral affair
may well be my new favorite sequence
to pass the time,
on a sunny,
Tuesday afternoon,
in London,
with you.

Closure

Old friend

Or should I call you stranger instead

From the first unanswered chats 

I should’ve known

You’ve got some girl again

Just how it is every damn time

My man

Sorry I have overstepped yet again 

Because you were never mine

To begin with 

Whatever we’ve been through

None of that mattered anymore 

No one

Would understand how that was like

Despite being a lousy boyfriend

You were a cornerstone 

I’ve fall back on more often than not 

At my best and at my worst

So now

I mourn for the end of a decade

Time has come to leave that all behind 

Move on, you no longer give two cents

I’m nothing but a nuisance 

Truth is

Long before you were mine

My best friend was simply, you 

Left a far bigger hole 

A mere lover can’t fill

It’s the same but different

On one warm 
sunny afternoon,
I learned that you are now
someone else’s

And I start to wonder,
do you still remember 

what you said about
the two daughters we’re gonna have,
with your eyes and my nose?

When you picked up this new grey cat,
With your new pale girl,
do you still think about the ginger tabby we brought home,
our lovely Luka dear?
Who is still the sweetest little fur ball,
with the biggest heart and tender meow even to strangers.
Except you’re not around to pat him anymore.

When you gave her the birthday illustration with messages behind,
have you forgotten what you wrote at the back of the first framed art you gave me?
Or the second, or the third?

When you took that photo with her
under your new studio’s logo,
do you still recall it was me who gave that name?
In both languages?

I can’t help but ponder,
do you ever still think of me, ever so rarely-
When you’re using the placemats I picked out, that goes with the bowls that I broke,

when you took her to the same midnight cafe you took me
or when you made the same dishes you cooked for me but now for someone else?

Does any of these still mattered…?
Or am I the only one,
who still think of that future, for the both of us?

My master and I

In my previous life, I was the cat of an educated man.

I, a tiny ball of charcoal, forgotten by mama kitty.

He, with a big white beard, left behind by his family.

We lived in the countryside where the sun shines 

more often than it hides. 

Most days it was just the two of us, 

but sometimes visitors would arrive in a big red bus.

Students admired my shinny velvelty fur.

Some knew just the way I liked to be pet, 

and I’d let out the loudest purr.

We often spend nighttime around the fireplace 

him with his whiskey and me with my milk.

He would read Tolkien or Hemingway

While I groom every patch of my body 

in this warm cozy space. 

Once I was chasing a bird

Who was chirping way too loud

Into the woods so deep nothing else could be heard

I thought living in the wild would be nice for awhile

But my old man came calling for me from a mile.

So nowadays I just watch squirrels from our garden. 

Those that stuff their cheeks with nuts until they swell

while my owner had French lesson. 

When it was my favorite class – Le Petit Prince,

I would crawl onto his lap and listen as well.

Day after day, from dusk till dawn,

we had the best time together

beyond anyone or any cat could have wished for

Until our time was up,

the day for us both to move on to the next life.

The thing about love

The thing about love, you see, is I don’t need no permission, not even yours.

You can’t make me love you, and you can’t stop me from loving you.

And that’s the beauty…of love.

In its absence, my heart just don’t bother,

but if I’ve made up my mind, if my heart has chosen, you –

then just one glance from the corner of your eye, one strand of hair that fell from your forehead, one sniff of your wrist, one nerdy comment you make, one silly cat imitation, one touch on the tip of my nose-

makes my heart

stops.

My legs turn jelly and my brain froze.

That’s the greatest power of the universe, the power of love.

So, may I be your co-pilot for life, even if I can’t really do math?

No, I don’t know, maybe? I’m not sure.

That’s fine, I know better that love is not a spectrum.

It is one of the few pure things in life that is absolute.

Yes and no, black and white.

Like justice, grammar and sunsets.

And only I- can stop myself from loving you,

no matter how difficult it will be,

I will do it, because I need to love myself.

That’s the greatest curse of the universe, the curse of love.

There, I’m sorry, happy endings are hard to come by in real life.

25 months in Taipei

You left my life abruptly, 

as sudden as you entered.

Amidst the rush to leave

fragments of you were left all over

the city where we met, fell in love and parted 

Everywhere I go, 

I see your face

Drawn all over Taipei

I stood outside my balcony 

and looked down the old alley

all I hear is your voice

I see you in the guy on a motorcycle 

Your brand of cigarette before I made you quit

Bars where you’ve stolen more than a kiss 

Carparks and roads where we cursed and fought

Places we said would go but never did

Promises you made but could not keep

And the sunsets where you said goodbye

I thought by collecting all these pieces,

The completed puzzle would be a map

that leads me back to you

But now that I’ve gathered all the clues I see,

I am right where I’m supposed to be,

the city where I fall in love again