Maybe I Should’ve Known Romantic Love Was A Lost Cause

You wanted a love story and this

isn’t 

it. 

You say you’re going through trials by fire 

but these are not the flames 

that birth phoenix

these are the flames that destroy forests so

Put it out.

He she they aren’t worth the 

Destruction 

of your soul;

Darling, 

You wanted a love story and listen to me. 

This

isn’t 

it. 

.

—Why do we mistake destruction for creation? (y.c.)

You fall asleep to the sound of your heart

Trying to break free from your chest

And wake to your thoughts trying desperately

To escape your brain.

What does it say about you when your own

organs

Want to escape your body?

— y.c.

Forest path

When did

h o p e

stop feeling like a dream

and start feeling like a joke?

I chase

l o v e

thinking that will lead to the

h o p e

they gets me out of bed everyday

but it keeps slipping through my fingers

like water

No,

like sand

gritty and rough

It’s worn me down

This running can’t help me find

this elusive

emotional

El Dorado

that we poets pretend to know anything about

— Yushan C.

Dreamers with empty hearts and frozen hands,

you come running

crying “love”

when it’s

Convenient

when you’re tired of carrying the weight of the

world (responsibility)

and I let you in

the foolish, gullible villager falling

Always

for your tricks

but one day,

Your cries will no longer sound genuine and

that,

my love,

is the day you’ll perish

— a warning (y.c.)

We are home.

No, we are not all in the same house

the same city

No, we don’t all go home to peace

but we are home.

Words cannot abandon us

Hope cannot fade so long as we keep

Holding

On

so

Hold

On

Home isn’t always where the heart is

Sometimes

All it is

is a pen

paper

poems

But it doesn’t matter

Home is what you make it even when you’re not

making it so

take a deep breath

Look around you.

No matter where you are now

One day, I promise you:

We will be home.

— y.c.

Everything feels the same, now. 

That is to say, 

Everything feels like coming to life. 

That is to say, everything

Feels like dying anew. 

.

—resurrection (y.c.)

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.)