Aquarius

How rare to find one

Staring out into the sea

With longing

Or is it despair?

I can’t tell

Through the glisten in your eyes.

The same gossamer sheen

Spiderwebs at sea

Reflected in cataracts

Drifting off in cloudy dreams.

To those doe brown eyes that I know so very well — 

What do you see? I don’t mean what’s right in front of you. That much I can already see. I want to know what’s behind your eyelids when you close your eyes and dream. I want you to tell me about the stories your mind tells when the night haunts you. When you wake up sweating, unsure what you just saw. When you were convinced you were living the nightmare and you wake up, again and again, in a new layer, a new dimension of sleep. 

Do your retinas follow the voices roaring in your ears? Do the voices paint you pictures? Tell me about those pictures. Tell me what the voices are saying. Tell me who is talking to you.

Keep a level head, Aquarius. You know just as well as I that the voices aren’t real. Just keep looking at the pretty pictures behind your eyelids. Trace the figments of light darting in and out of your consciousness. Let them trick you into a more beautiful reality than the one you exist in. Never mind your heart sinking. Focus on your eyes, the doe brown eyes you hate staring into, pools of chocolate, dark as charcoal. 

I know you don’t think your eyes have color. You think they are black, void of brightness. But when I see them, they shine. They are mesmerizing, because I know they’re hiding something. You can hide all you want, but your eyes will always give you away. That you are lonely. That you are desolate. That no matter what reality you wake up into, it’s not the reality you want. 

I wish I could give you my eyes. So you can see a clearer version of yourself. How funny it is that in this existence, you live outside of your body. And yet in your dreams, you are grounded, experiencing everything firsthand, the wonderful, the phantasmic, the ugly, everything. How tragic that dreams aren’t real and yet how bittersweet that even if you dissociate, reality will always be better than your dreams. 

I wish you could see the way I saw. But all you see when you see yourself is someone drowning, drowning, drowning. 

You seek peace

That you often confuse with happiness

But how could you know the difference

When helicopters always ruin the horizon?

Are you happy?

When you stare at the sea

Hallowed eyes, hollow heart

Painting your wrists in colorful patterns

Just to embody your sadness.

To the heart so still —

Sometimes, I can’t tell if it’s still beating or not. So frail and fragile, secluded behind all the traps you have set to keep everyone and everything out. Why do you hide like that? 

A child’s heart, so soft, a paradox. You are capable of feeling so much, but you’d never let yourself admit it. So you harden your heart into a stone you hold in your hand. You know how they say some people wear their hearts on their sleeves? You hold yours in your palm, longing to give it away but afraid that if you do, it’ll shatter and break. 

What’s a heart good for anyway, you think? Typical Aquarius, your stars in Venus. But no matter how much scar tissue has built up over your heart, it continues to care about others in a way I could never understand. And maybe that’s what a heart’s good for. Understanding oxymorons, piecing together paradoxes. Believing in the supernatural and illuminating the messages from the universe the rational could never comprehend. 

Don’t be afraid to love, my child. It will never make you weak. But remember, love only makes you strong if you choose to love yourself the same way you choose to love others. 

Cleave your skin, Aquarius

The sea doesn’t know

That within your lonely cathedral of bones

You’re looking for nothing.

To the skeleton where you seek sanctuary — 

Never a bone has been broken in this concrete jungle that holds you up. I know you don’t think much of your bones, but you ask so much of them. You ask them to keep moving, keep going, keep running, keep walking even when you can barely stand. But you fear that if you stop, the disease of your mind will never let you start again. 

Your stature is not tall and yet when you hold yourself high, you can be taller than a goddess. You hold more power in your bones than you could ever imagine. I know there is so much about your figure that you wish you could change. But bones are beautiful because even though you can change everything about yourself externally, they will always stay the same. Your bones are the roots of your body, and they represent the ethereal beauty of human beings. And when your bones grow and wither, the rest of your body will follow its lead. And truly if your body is a temple, your bones are the pillars that support its weight. 

In your lonely cathedral of bones, I am sure you want to conceal your secrets. But when you strip away every other part of your body, your skeleton is the foundation of your being. Just as a house is as strong as its foundation, you are just as strong as your cathedral of bones. So start building from there, and I promise you will become a picture worth more than the sum of its parts. 

For nothing ever is truly lost

It just no longer exists

In this plane of time

So maybe the canopy of heaven

Is just out of your reach.

To the pale canopy of skin draping over the cathedral of bones– 

You hate to be touched. You’ve learned to distinguish between the touch of someone meaning well and someone who wants to hurt you. But you rarely let anyone get that close. I’ve seen the goosebumps when something brushes against your skin. You are easily startled, and if your eyes are difficult to comprehend, your skin will always give it away. 

You try so hard to befriend the mirrors surrounding you on all sides. I’ve watched your skin change over the years. I’ve seen it darken, turn into snow, become lava and then solidify. There is so much magma underneath the surface and when you erupt, you see red. I’ve never seen fault lines resemble barbed wire so closely, and it makes me think that you’re imprisoning yourself in your own skin. That you see it as a jail to trap you into this meaningless existence. 

I hear what people say to you. To tattoo in the fault lines so there’s a reason for them to be on your skin. To hide them, cover them, forget about them. And the voices tell you everyday to keep carving in the patterns, geometric shapes to make sense of this senseless world. Order to the entropy of your mind. I know that in your journey to the center of your being, you’ve almost cut into your cathedral of bones. You were terrified, and rightfully so. 

Do fault lines ever truly heal, you wonder? I don’t have an answer for you, sweet Aquarius. Even though they may fade with the subtleties of time, I know the fault lines, the magma, the barbed wire are seared into your mind. And because of that, part of you will always remain broken. 

But I choose to see your fault lines as life lines, tethering you to this world. Whatever it takes to keep you here, to make you stay. For what it’s worth, the ash from a volcanic eruption always welcomes new life to sprout. And I’ve seen you rise from your ashes again and again and again. 

Patient you are not

But you are always waiting

For the last train to come

To finally take you home.

To the feet so weary they threaten to buckle underneath you —

Where is home? Where do you belong? You don’t know, and that’s okay. You’ve spent your whole life trying to fit in, flitting here and there, never staying for long, never wanting to overstay your welcome. But now you want to plant yourself somewhere and you don’t know where to go. 

There’s still time. You don’t have to figure it out just yet. And as cliche as it sounds, home is what you carry with you, what you think about in your darkest, loneliest nights. Home will always be Taiwan. Home will be that wretched house in the north that you now miss. Home will be the friends in San Diego, scattered wherever the wind took them. But home is not a person, place, nor a thing. Home is what you embody and where you decide to grow your roots for the children after you. Home is the final stitch you weave in your generational quilt before you breathe your last breath. And home is passed down over time in the fabric of the universe. 

I promise you will not run out of time. I promise you have time to stop and rest. So please, my child, rest. Your feet are tired of running away. Give them a chance to help you stand. 

So you choose to wait

By the sea

Where the sky meets

And the sun falls

Where strawberry fields

Turn into water overalls.

To the arms arching into spindly hands — 

They have always kept you safe. Your arms were your shield, your fortress, your armor against me. Against all the blades I held against you during all the times I tried to hurt you. I didn’t hate you. I just didn’t know better. I wanted you to be not you. But you never will be and I’m learning that all the flaws I always saw in you made your spirit ache. So much that you blamed yourself more than I ever blamed you. And I wish I could turn back time and do it all over again. I wish I could tell you how beautiful you’ve become, that I wish I had been there to see you grow. I wish I had never taught you to hate yourself. I wish I had loved you the way I wanted to be loved. But the best I can do now is to help you heal. 

I don’t know if I ever told you this, and I don’t know if I’m too late. But I’m sorry. 

I am so, so sorry. For everything I did and everything I said. I’m sorry. 

With all the fire burning

Your body bit by bit

I hear you cry out

Even if there isn’t

Anything I can do to save you.

To the voice you can’t stand to hear and the mind you think is broken —

You are not broken. Your voice is your own. Use it. Be proud of it, and speak what’s on your mind, no matter what I used to tell you, no matter what they used to tell you. Your laugh sounds like bells, wind chimes on a vibrant spring day. And your mind is a puzzle, tesseracts of thoughts, filled with voices and ideas, morbid and wondrous. 

I made you think that you’re a demon. That your mind was a monster and your voice a disgusting witch. So you always ran away. Because you never felt safe. Not in your cathedral of bones, in your tesseract mind, in your fluttering soul. 

I’ve watched you hold the knife against your throat in the mirror. Cut off your voice, the chamber to your mind. Slit the lifeline tethering you down. I let you drown. I watched the sea swallow you beneath the surface, and I never came to find you.

But I can’t any longer. A mind like yours is one of a kind. And a voice like yours should ring out and cut through the darkness. Every single part of the body you hate so much pulses with the life you think you don’t deserve.

This is what it is. This life is yours; I can no longer stand by and let you waste it as a silhouette because I told you it was the only way. It is not. Perhaps you are twisted and broken in a million shards. But you can hold onto me, and we’ll piece you back together. You never learned to hold yourself up. So how could I have ever expected you to be perfect?

My darling Aquarius, it’s me. I will find you, so our spirits can be reunited. I will find you, so for the first time in our lives, we can truly be friends. 

Aquarius, bearer of water,

Flighty as a bird

Free as the air

Aren’t you tired

Of chasing dreams

When they set

Over Earth’s shoulder

In the starry pastures

Of the atmosphere?

To the soul that is lost–

I am coming. I just need you to wait for a little while longer. I’m figuring out where she’s hidden you, the scared girl terrified of her own shadow. I know where your spirit is. I know you’re in there. I’m almost there. 

You are pure, a being of light. I realize that I’m asking you to trust me, and all I’ve ever done is push you away and make you fear me. I made you afraid to feel, when feeling is what connects you most to your spirit. I know you’ve been waiting for me for years and years. And only now can I promise you that I am finally, finally on my way. 

I am going to set you on fire. There is already a fire raging inside you, but you’ve been holding on so long, not letting yourself catch aflame. You wonder, do you have a right to live? To exist? If you’re barely holding on? No one ever told you this. But you do. You always have. 

I want you to live. I want you to stay. 

So I let you burn

And I’ll fire away

Watch the arrows

Pierce your shining armor

As the world around you

Dims.

To the body you never wanted — 

Rise, sweet Aquarius,

Blessed with a new being

Basking in the radiance

Of your inner child

You locked away

So long ago. 

Don’t you see?

She never left you.

You were never abandoned

You had to choose to see her

And choose to love her

And every part

Of who she is

Before you could go

And set her spirit free. 

Queen Aquarius,

You never changed,

Nothing is different

But the way you see yourself

Scars so beautiful

Circular healing

But finally, finally

You’re on your way

And if you are ever

Lost or bereft,

I promise I will always

Be with you 

Until the end.