by Ave Kim
The world is like an ugly dirty thing
Filled with smears and colors.
I do not love you, and i do not love you
I do not understand you because i don’t want to understand you
I do not care about your pain
I do not know your suffering
I do not know who you are
Pride in cruelty, pride in apathy. Because i do not know you, i will never love you.
But if i do know you, but if i do hear you
If i see beyond myself, to climb out of the pit of ignorance i dug myself into, to see you. If perhaps the world will clarify itself into crystal solidity, and if i do reach,
Hear my voice, as frail as it is. Filled with hope and lackluster resignation. I do love you, i do see you, please please also look at me. Please try and understand me. Please do not hurt me. Please do not hurt my family. Please please please please. Just look at me.
What if i do not love you?
Look at me
And if i see nothing?
Then try and try, as just living is suffering and breathing is costly.
Keep looking on and on, until the horizon never sets, the word does not end with you as it didn’t start with you. I will not die down with a single ring, i will be the waves against the cliffs, and the injustice-the moon that draws my tides.
I long for a calm sea, where turbulence does not exist. But since beyond my parents and their parents, and even when the world was red with blood. There has never been calm in the sea.
And if i can love you, if i do love you?
Is this not enough?
No, nothing ever is. Nothing never is.
I don’t know if i can ever love you the way you want me to.
Then just listen, then just try. It’s all i ask of you.