in the notebook
when all the expensive lipsticks in the world can no longer keep you calm, when all the luxury, the bright events, the perfect outfits, the exchange rates with too many zeros, and the direct flights to promised lands still cannot quiet the ache in your chest. and somewhere between those
in the autopsy
what we had for two years was not love. love does not require one person to keep surviving the other. you wanted me when things were easy, when i was soft, happy, available, and convenient. but the moment things became difficult, you left me to carry everything alone, almost like
in the notebook
he still calls me Bails. sixteen years have passed. cities changed, faces aged, lovers came and went, but the nickname never did. sometimes it lands in my inbox like a ghost from another decade, small and familiar, stripped of the weight it once carried but still sharp enough to sting.
in the autopsy
somewhere right now, he's telling his new girlfriend what a terrible person i was, and she's sitting there smiling like she just won the lottery. two clowns. one circus. the truth is, he's recycling the same tired victim story because accountability was never something
in the notebook
i realized that the version of me who comes out when i'm drunk is strangely the person i have always wished i could be when i'm sober: warm, easy, laughing without thinking, unafraid of being seen. i remember the railway tracks. the nights we wandered like
in the notebook
i remember life in colors. the blue of the sea in Nha Trang, from the time i was thrown off a jet ski. the green of the trees in the park, seen from the balcony of the restaurant i used to sit at in the city. the pale silver-grey
in the notebook
while everyone seems determined to turn every painful experience into a lesson about positivity, i think we should be allowed to admit that some things were simply awful. that we survived things we should never have had to survive, and that they changed us in ways we may never completely
in the autopsy
and for the first time in my life, i understood what it meant to be abused by someone i loved sincerely, you've torn apart every piece of me. every plea meant nothing in the haze of your drunken rage. by the time the sun rose and you woke
in the autopsy
when there is no one left to love, i hope i will know how to love myself. you have spent all this time building a thousand futures, and my name does not exist in a single one of them. sometimes i wonder if you understand how heartbreaking that is. perhaps
in the notebook
i come from a city far away, where my childhood once lived inside a shabby little house that somehow still felt warm, where dinner always came with three dishes, my father spoke to me with a softness i thought would always be there, and the windows opened onto gentle sunlight.
in the notebook
i used to think the troubles of the world belonged to newspapers. wars, upheavals, collapsing worlds, people losing everything overnight. they felt like chapters in some unbearably long novel written about other people's lives. you read them, feel something for a moment, turn the page, and eventually forget.
in the notebook
they say, it is a strange. to belong to Saigon and still have nowhere to call home. as though my heart had been misplaced somewhere in the crowded streets, as though even my longing had forgotten where it was meant to return. they say, it is heartbreaking. a child of