Author Archives: zl103046

The streaming age

17- Fix You

When you try your best, but you don’t succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep

Stuck in reverse

I first met you in a church when I was seventeen years old. You were forced to go, I was indifferent; no one cares at the age of seventeen. You wore a pair of navy blue jeans and a plaid t-shirt; I didn’t like you. You looked like a bookworm, how could we ever have anything in common? The pastor walked from across the room and introduced you to me. “Show K around. She’s an international student from China, and she just graduated from the University of Michigan.” Oh great, I thought to myself, she’s one of those straight A students that does nothing but study, how annoying. All of sudden, a smirk appeared on your face and you held your hand out for me to shake. I did. Little did I know, this marked the beginning of our unforeseeable friendship.

And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something you can’t replace

When you love someone, but it goes to waste

Could it be worse?

We were different in every way; you were always so pessimistic, and I was the complete opposite. I sympathized you for being alone in the U.S. for four years without any loved ones around. You told me that you didn’t like China, didn’t like the government, and didn’t even like your parents. You didn’t have many friends, and often spent your birthdays alone inside the nearest McDonald’s, watching people walk by through the musty window. You were surrounded by smiles and laughter, but knew that none of them were for you. You were just a lonely soul trapped in this crowded world; there was no one to confide to, you were all alone.  You told me that not everything could go your way; no matter how hard you try. Sometimes certain things just aren’t meant to be. That year, you introduced Coldplay to me.

18- Yellow

Look at the stars,

Look how they shine for you,

And everything you do,

Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,

I wrote a song for you,

And all the things you do,

And it was called “Yellow”.

I didn’t know why you wanted to be friends with me. I was four years younger than you, lived in the protection of my family, and never experienced the feeling of isolation. You lived in a closet-sized room in a four-bedroom apartment with a bunch of Chinese roommates, none of which you liked. I was reluctant the first time you invited over to your home; after all, what do we really know about each other? Your apartment smelled of tobacco and old shoes, since your landlord was a heavy smoker and never learned to take care of himself in the absence of his wife. I was stunned at the size of your room, there was only enough room to put a mattress, without even the space for a chair. We sat on your uncomfortable mattress in the dimness of the little room and listened to a bunch of depressing songs, and Yellow stuck out to me the most.

Your skin,

Oh yeah your skin and bones,

Turn into something beautiful,

And you know,

For you I’d bleed myself dry,

For you I’d bleed myself dry.

For some reason, I felt extremely attached to you at that instant. I wanted to hold unto your hands and let you know that you were not alone.  Somehow I had the urge to cry. I went to see you every day after school, just to make sure that you could feel the least bit of warmth from another person. I wanted you to believe in friendship, family bound, and even love. You told me that you never had a boyfriend because you never believed in relationships. You’ve witnessed enough arguments from your parents to be convinced that love actually existed. But, I loved you. I did everything within my power to make you happy, just so that I can see you smile. Sometimes I wonder why you even spoke to me at all. The best answer I came up with after all these years is that you were just bored. I was the one that you talked to when you had nothing better to do; the one that you eventually left behind.

19- What If

What if there was no lie

Nothing wrong, nothing right

What if there was no time

And no reason, or rhyme

What if you should decide

That you don’t want me there by your side

That you don’t want me there in your life

Nothing changed. I was tired of always giving and giving. I realized that no matter how hard I try, you would never learn to appreciate the things that this world offers. That year, a guy came into your life. He was almost ten years older than you, uneducated, worked at a restaurant, and didn’t even speak English. You didn’t like him at first, but because of his persistence you eventually accepted him. He took you out for dinners, bought you gifts and said words of flattery. You told me once that if you weren’t stuck in your current situation—unemployed due to visa problems—you would not lay an eye on a guy like that in a million years. Yet, you chose him at the end. You invited him over to your tiny room, you unwillingly allowed him to share your mattress, but you knew better than to share your songs with him. He would never talk about the things that you were interested in, because the only thing that he was interested in was you. I felt like an abandoned puppy—a fool for trying so hard to please someone, yet still gotten thrown away at the end. Was that the end of our friendship?

Every step that you take

Could be your biggest mistake

It could bend or it could break

That’s the risk that you take

After studying in the U.S. for four years and earning a 3.98 GPA for Finance, only a mad person would throw everything away and go back to the starting point. Yet, he was able to convince you to leave this country and go back to China. Despite of all the hopes and dreams that your parents had for you, you decided to leave everything behind and pursue a journey that you cannot even foresee. I was on the verge of going crazy because I wanted you to stay; I wanted to you to be successful, and most importantly, I wanted you to be near me. The day before you left, I went to see you for the last time in your tobacco filled apartment. We drank in your small room and listened to all those songs that we had listened to over and over again. I asked you to come over to my apartment and spend your final night with my family, but you said no. You said he was coming over and offered to take you to the airport the next morning. Before you could finish your last sentence, drops of warm tears already rolled down my face. I cried and cried until the little well in my heart became dry. That was the last time I saw you.

21- The Scientist

Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry

You don’t know how lovely you are

I had to find you, tell you I need you

Tell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions

Oh let’s go back to the start

Running in circles, coming up tails

Heads on a science apart

Many years have passed since your departure. You never came back to the U.S. and I never visited you when I went back to China. I never forgot about you, in fact I thought about you every day when you first left. I thought about you when I saw someone holding the same cell phone that you had; I thought about you when I looked at the empty birthday card you gave me; and I thought of you more than ever when I listened to the songs that we used to listen to together. I started writing about deaths, and became hopeless toward many things. Yet, as time passed, I gradually became used to not having you around. In a way, I felt a big burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Even if you didn’t leave, I had a feeling that our friendship was still coming to an end. But I still wanted to thank you for coming into my life at such a delicate age.

Nobody said it was easy

It’s such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard

Oh, take me back to the start.

I’m twenty-one now, and I still think of you from time to time. I think of you in the sense that we once knew each other, like the way I think about my elementary school friends. My heart finally stopped hurting when I say your name out loud, and I made many new friends to fill up the void that you left behind. I never understood why I cared about you so much; maybe I was the one who really yearned for a friend. Nevertheless, many years have passed and I have matured a lot from the girl that once cried at the sight of her friend leaving, to the calm person that can easily say goodbye to anyone. Maybe you are right, maybe nothing could last forever; but, it is the process that makes everything meaningful. If I could go back to the start—to when you were first introduced to me—maybe I would avoid that handshake and let you sit there and be bored. Eventually someone would come to cheer you up, but it wouldn’t be me.

17- Fix You

When you try your best, but you don’t succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep

Stuck in reverse

I first met you in a church when I was seventeen years old. You were forced to go, I was the daughter of the pastor. You wore a pair of worn out jeans and a plain t-shirt; I was all dolled up, like one of those porcelain dolls that little girls receive on Christmas. You sat there alone with your head down, as if you were trying to hide away from the glory of this pretentious world. I looked at you from afar, smiling as usual. I didn’t know how to approach you, so I started to sing. I sang so loudly that I droned out the rest of the chorus, and everyone stared at me in awe. I didn’t care about what others thought of me; I just wanted you to notice my existence. You did.  As I sang the words of God, you stood up and left the room. I kept on singing, but I was no longer smiling. I felt an immense rush of pain shooting from my heart; I think I was bleeding inside. I had never seen anyone who looked so sad. Why were you so sad?

 And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something you can’t replace

When you love someone, but it goes to waste

Could it be worse?

 I ran off from the stage and chased after you. I didn’t know where you went, so I looked everywhere, until I found you sitting alone by the entrance. You looked at me like the way a little child who hadn’t see his mom for a long time, and took me into your arms. You clinched onto me as if I was your last lifeline, and I felt the streams of tears wetting the top of my shoulder. I knew you needed someone to love; even though, you weren’t capable of loving. I knew the sudden love that I developed for you would end up tearing me apart, but I was too sad to let go of such a wounded soul. I knew I had to save you like the way Jesus saved his people; I didn’t mind dying for you.

18- Yellow

Look at the stars,

Look how they shine for you,

And everything you do,

Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,

I wrote a song for you,

And all the things you do,

And it was called “Yellow”.

I saw you smile for the first time when I was eighteen years old. Your smile was innocent, like the smile of a little puppy. Your eyes were bright, so bright that it reminded me of the way the Cross looked hanging from the altar. You never went back to the church, but you kept on coming to see me. You told me that you had lost all faith in God, because he was never there for you when you needed him. He wasn’t there when your mother got ran over by a car, he wasn’t there when you were sent from one relative to another, like the way an old shirt gets handed down from one person to another, and he wasn’t there for you when your drunken uncle took you and beat you everyday. You smiled as you told me everything, as if all the misfortune belonged to someone else. You held tightly unto me, and told me to sing you a song. I did, the one that I wrote especially for you.

Your skin,

Oh yeah your skin and bones,

Turn into something beautiful,

And you know,

For you I’d bleed myself dry,

For you I’d bleed myself dry.

 I knew there was no turning back. My heart had been sewn with yours, and we’ve become one like the way God created a woman from a man’s ribcage. I absorbed every bit of your wildness, your loveliness, and your loneliness. Sometimes your loneliness could be overbearing, making me sad myself. Yet, I always smiled in front of you, even when I was crying inside. I stopped seeing my friends because I didn’t want you to feel like I was abandoning you. I skipped Christmas with my family, so that you wouldn’t have to spend it alone. I wanted to do all the things I could to make you experience the least bit of love and joy in this world. I was nailing myself to the cross.

19- What If

 What if there was no lie

Nothing wrong, nothing right

What if there was no time

And no reason, or rhyme

What if you should decide

That you don’t want me there by your side

That you don’t want me there in your life

Between the years of eighteen and nineteen, I think I cried more times than my entire existence. I stopped talking to my parents because they wouldn’t approve of you. My father said that the son of an ex-convict should not be part of our family, and my mother cried every night because she felt like she had lost her only daughter. Everyone around me considered me as a miracle child because I was born premature and almost went through a heart transplant at the age of three. I was always very weak as a child, and all of my family members treated me like a precious jewel. I always got what I wanted, and never understood the meaning of sadness. My father said that it was a sin to be sad under God’s love and glory. I had never doubted that, even when I met you. I always thought that if I had just tried a little harder, maybe you could see the joy that the world offered. However, I was wrong. Your heart had been stabbed too many times, to a point where only God could save you. I had lost.

Every step that you take

Could be your biggest mistake

It could bend or it could break

That’s the risk that you take

You finally left me and disappeared into the lonely world. You disappeared as swiftly as you had appeared in my life.  I cried night and day, until my eyes became blurry. I locked myself in my room and blamed myself for not loving you enough, for making you run away once again.  But I tried, and died during the process. I had already given up my entire happiness; there is nothing else that I could possibly give. Maybe there was another girl somewhere in the world waiting for you to discover, waiting for you to love, and waiting for you to forget your wounds. However, that girl was not me. My eyes remained blurry for days, I thought I was going blind; yet, I regained my sight after the seventh day, and decided to forget about you after that.

20- The Scientist

Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry

You don’t know how lovely you are

I had to find you, tell you I need you

Tell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions

Oh let’s go back to the start

Running in circles, coming up tails

Heads on a science apart

 

Nobody said it was easy

It’s such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard

Oh, take me back to the start.

Dear Annabel,

If I were to pick a favorite number, it would have to be 20. Twenty was when I first met you. I was sitting hopelessly in the middle of the crowded church, looking at all the pretentious faces around me. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and put my head down to drone out the noise. As each sound was slowly fading out of my head, I suddenly heard the most wonderful voice in my life, reminding me of the way my mother used to sing to me as a child. I didn’t know what to do because all of the memories that I tried to get rid of suddenly came back to me. I had to leave, but I didn’t want to leave you. I went outside hoping that I could catch a glimpse of you later on; but, to my surprise, you actually came out. When I saw you up close, I thought I saw my mother through your eyes. I held onto you like a little child, afraid that you might go away. I knew that I had been attached to you from the start.

I’ve never told you this, but the time that I spent with you was the happiest of my life. Yet, it haunted me just as much. The sight of you somehow brought back all of my past memories, as if someone was picking at an almost-healed scab. Your happiness, your loveliness, and everything about you reminded me of everything that I was not. I couldn’t stand myself corrupting an innocent soul like yours, since I had too much sadness inside of me. In a way, you reminded me of a saint, always sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. I knew your family had problems with me and you stopped talking to them after seeing me. You didn’t have to hide all of your sadness away; the silence of your cry haunted me even more. Guilt and helplessness started building inside of me, and I couldn’t stand watching you deteriorate right before my eyes. I had to leave. I had to act cold towards you; otherwise I couldn’t bear leaving you behind. Annabel, I am so sorry for bringing you so much pain into your life. Even though a year had passed, I had never stopped thinking about you. I don’t have much time left because I finally found a way to chastise my soul, I will go see God. Thank you for being there for me when I most needed it, and thank you for loving me when everyone had forsook me. If I could choose, I don’t wish to come back to earth again; but, if I must, I would implore God to allow me to meet you earlier, so that I could save the best of me for you. Please forget about me. Everything had been a wonderful dream, but now it’s time to wake up. I’m sure when I wake up everything will start all over again; I am going back to the start.

 

Welcome to Blogs@Baruch!

This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging.