Sue Zhao

I still cannot bear

Loving what we used to love

Together, alone

Portrait of María Hahn - Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta

when I say “everyone’s on their own timeline”, I mean it.

there’s no right age to learn something by. there’s no right age to be settled down, to move out of home, or to start your own family. there’s no right age to start working, if you work at all. there’s no right age to graduate.

life isn’t a series of boxes you need to tick. do things at your own pace. slow down if you need to. it’s okay.

Fantasy

Over there, a mountain side

billowing over a timeless pride

a valley, full of wisps and sighs

each flower an ear

each leaf an eye

.

The sun does not set here

forever, the full moon bright and sheer

will expel the living of their fear

the light-filled twins

share a darkened sky

.

I sat down amongst it all

my mind swaying, a graceful fall

settled within this imagined world

my head a blur

my heart a whirl

Fallen angels are only humans in disguise, reincarnated to follow a new purpose - heal others in order to heal yourself.

excerpt from a poem you can find exclusively in my poetry book 𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘬𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘺, available on Amazon 💫

Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor. Most stories get told out loud because the storyteller hopes that the telling of the story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one. We tend to associate intimacy with closeness and closeness with a certain sum of shared experiences. Yet in reality total strangers, who will never say a single word to each other, can share an intimacy — an intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. A closeness that lasts for minutes or for the duration of a song that is being listened to together. An agreement about life. An agreement without clauses. A conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song.

John Berger, "Some Notes on Song (for Yasmine Hamdan)"

Tuesday, 28th September 2021

My reality is shaped in colours; a painting blurred in depths of hues, brushed by a wandering silence.

something i wish i had realized earlier: you can write poems on the same subject more than once. you can write, paint, draw the same thing over and over if you want to. you can spend your whole life making art about oranges. i think i always felt this pressure to get it right the first time like i couldn’t go back and use that inspiration again. but you can. you can go back and revisit it. you can pick up the conversation again and again if you have more to say.