I kneeled down in front of the pale clay figure. She was dressed in a white draper that fell elegantly on the body. Its ends slightly touched the floor. Her right hand was holding a water lily, the only painted area. Her fingertips of the other hand softly touched the palm of her right hand. It was a gesture that signified calmness and peace. My knees felt cold from the tiles despite the mid-summer heat. Outside, the rain kept running into the half-brick and half-plastic covered rooftop. The irregular rhythm created a symphony, resonating within the temple. This Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, stands inside of a Buddhist temple that is situated at the Lei Yue Mun Island in Hong Kong. I closed my eyes, put my palms close to each other, and whispered in my heart, “Kwan Yin, will you kindly show me how to regain joy and hope? I am not asking for immediate heal from this grief but I know that blind hope can only go so far.” I paused and took a peek at Kwan Yin for a moment. Then, I quickly added, “I guess if you are not mad at me for visiting only once a year…but to be fair, I still come back and visit you every summer.”

That was the first time I asked a sincere question towards Kwan Yin during nineteen years of my life. My family has made this journey every year since my birth. We are not religious and we did not ever figure out when our ritual of visiting the Buddhist temple begin. Still, my mother always ask my sister and I to pray for good health, knowing that we enjoy the adventure of getting there more than the actual praying itself. However, that summer was different – I lost a particularly close friend and I was making sense of grief. Everything, including my health, was at the tipping point. I lost my appetite, sometimes eating one meal or none per day. My interests drifted away – I stopped reading, playing sports, and seeing friends. The only practice I sustained was keeping a gratefulness journal that my counselor insisted in. Every night before I went to bed, I wrote, “Today, I’m grateful for…” Now, two years passed. In hindsight, the entire experience was both surreal and real. That summer was the first time I pondered about religion and the spiritual world. It was the first time in five years that I picked up writing again and I started with my long-lost friend, poetry.

三月十五號 - 安娜堡，密西根

雪紛飛 雨蕭蕭地下來

我何不嘗想一走了之？

朋友，還是別了。

May 6, 2014 - Room, Hong Kong

I dreamed about you last night

You looked at me with empty eyes

Your lips did not turn up at the corners

“Who are you?”

Sweating, catching my breath

I woke up to the dark and curled myself up

Your gentle eyes looked at me

“It’s just another nightmare.”

But tears already blurred my eyes

And I tried hard to catch yours before they fade

July 7, 2014 - Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

We stood between two sheets of grey

The cobblestones and the sky of clouds

This cemetery scene came in delay

Mocking delightfully at the living crowd

Stones cold like ice, still like sky

Shades from trees scattered above and across

Birds’ voices echoed like human sighs

Those wander destined to be lost

Crafted names and numbers

Denser the air, the air denser

Get lost, the wanders!

No defense or offense, just Death’s commence

An hour after an hour

Feet chained, sored, lost

Memories behind devoured

Then, began a holocaust

There was something therapeutic about writing poems and completing my journal each day. During my kindergarten years, I spent a short year in the U.S. I remember that I was unable to comprehend the concept of bilingualism. I mixed and matched Cantonese and English in my sentences. Poetry often reminds me of that oblivious and free period. There were possibilities anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps because poetry is naturally a more exclusive genre and requires more intentionality to formulate and express an idea, each piece of my poem was a laborious result of aimless yet intense narration on grief. Despite the imperfections in diction, rhythm, and meter of my poems, I found comfort in knowing that I only had more to work on. Writing slowly provided purpose and it became my therapy. However, as many of us know, a diagnosis or a treatment never just stops there – there is often a routine exercise attached to them afterwards and so as my journey with writing.