Artifact Study/Gallery Proposal Exercise
Room 1
looking through my things / to propose a themed gallery and present on Monday / at least two rooms / late November 2021 / freshman year of college / twin lavender bed sheets / December sunlight spilling in our first morning together / americanos on Sunday mornings at the art museum / your autumn hazel eyes / sparkling with a sacred new beginning / Pixar movies on your Macbook / you like the smell of the air / after it rains / kisses on the back of my hand / cheeks / because I said I liked them once / and you liked drawing out my laughter / exchanging our sweaters / fast piggy back rides at my work place after clocking out / double patty burgers and fries on Indiana Ave. / you write your English paper on “STFU” by Rina Sawayama and Asian fetishization / per my suggestion / and my influence is heavy handed / and exhausting / I break down crying over your first draft / it’s our first big fight / I choke trying to articulate my feelings / like it’s an audition / you say you’re sorry / eventually this will be one of our little dances / but we didn’t know better / this was one of three times I wish I let go of my death grip / white knuckle grip / on you / drunken calls / you wished I was with you / so we could dance at the Hungarian bar you’re at with your boys / two midnight kisses at New Years on Facetime / O’Hare airport goodbyes and hello agains / a bad gut feeling beginning sophomore year / November 2022 / you’re starting to have doubts / you don’t know why / you tell me under the shade of a tree behind Woodburn Hall / having to force you to tell me / still staying because I wanted this to be love / not a lesson / hoping choosing you would mean / you choosing me / still taking a road trip to Brown County / because we already made plans / golden sepia leaves cascading down / winding country roads / accidental breakup songs on the way there and back / but I’m only slightly sorry for my intrusion / two of three / but I double down on our love nest / our little pocket away from the world / December 2022 / one year together / you tell me you want to take me back with you to Europe someday / finally feeling like you were making room for me / spring break to New York and DC / museums as a love language / recurring arguments over the same things / different facades / that gut feeling is back / Bojack Horseman hyper fixation / you don’t want to get invested in a whole new show / Kiki’s Delivery Service rewatches on bad days / it’s for kids but it’s cute I guess / guarded annotated books I’d let you wander through if you took my offer / you stick to your history books / self-help books / Everything Everywhere All at Once screening / you actually liked this one / hoping you would follow the hints / the stories I love and hold to my chest / the ones that hold every ugly feeling I’ve ever had close / waiting for you to embrace them too / waiting to be the muse and not the poet / waiting for you to hunger to for the intimacy of knowing me / understanding me / waiting /
Room 2
the flame from the purple lighter / you flicked in front of my face / to get me to toughen up / you’ve said I was too soft many times / and you’re trying to keep me realistic / leaving me to drive myself to the ER for a kidney infection / “I just don’t feel like going right now” / you had a quiz in your next class to study for / bringing the wrong cookies to my hospital bed / I wish this is where I would say that was the final straw / the three of three strikes / but it wasn’t / you recording my first gallery opening for me / with your broken phone / a fraction of the summer / where you’re finally here before flying back home / attempts to teach me to swim / we both want to live in a city after college / maybe Chicago / we talk about the German Shepard / Pitbull / Shi Tzu who acts like the leader of the pack / and two cats in our future apartment / another easy summer away / you’ll be back before you know it / recurring arguments over the same things / different facades / the gut feeling returns /and doesn’t go away like I want it to / bargaining that if only you came around to understanding me / the Vietnamese / diaspora / body / in me / the Woman / body / in me / the intersections in / and around me / the anger / exhaustion / I’ve inherited / will eventually be my daughter’s / burden to bare / why femme rage for my next gallery of all things / things would be perfect / I rationalize that my partner doesn’t need to meet all my needs / it’s too much to expect from him / has withering away for the hope of it all become home / I know my feelings are such an imposition to you / we fight over the Supreme Court reversing affirmative action / you insist its actually good for Asians / interesting that this is when you choose to care about my / Asian / body / this is where I would say three of the three / but who was keeping score / I try to break up on July 8th / but I don’t want to / I wanted you to fight for me / to be someone worth fighting for / I know it’s cruel to test the people you love / we stay together to make things work / you promise things will be better once you’re back / but by then / you’re already drafting your escape plan / the wounded / fawn / body / of mine / processes July / like the beginning of the end / rotting in my bed / lashing out at the right and wrong people / crying in sculpture class using a drill / crying in my car / crying into the pillow I bought for your side of the bed / crying at my 9-5 / crying going 70 over Lake Monroe / like a religious pilgrimage every night / screaming a prayer that / I deserve to live / despite these big ugly feelings / I deserve to live / despite these big ugly feelings / I deserve to live / despite these big ugly feelings / taking residence in me / a prayer I don’t believe in / but hoping by saying it out loud in the pew of my Honda / maybe then it could finally hold teeth / the I love yous dwindle / like a desert drought / and saying it to you feels like / dancing to bring back rain / you can’t call me beautiful anymore / you just say I’m not ugly / and I should know it / you talk about buying a twin mattress / because it’s cheaper / you change the topic whenever / the future is brought up / and yes I noticed the fading / I take in all that you did and didn’t do / and soaked in it / became it /
Room 3
August 2023 / weekend before school starts / O’Hare pickup and kiss after loading your luggage in the car / something is different / but maybe my doomsday brain could be wrong this time / you’re more curt / probably just jet-lagged / you make no real plans for my 21st birthday / we try to catch the sunrise on the Great Lakes / but miss it by ten minutes / you’re mad about it for the rest of breakfast / we just walk around the city / and we catch the air show at the park / you avoid taking pictures with me / dinner with my mom at an Italian place you and your older sister picked out / going out to an arcade bar / fighting on the way there / “I guess I forgot how you are and that you’re just like this” / I throw up my truffle pasta and Gold Rush cocktail outside Walgreens / I stop us outside an Extra Storage Space on W. Ohio Street / to get it over with / you say we’re incompatible / you don’t see a future with me / you don’t want me to change who I am for you / it’s not fair if you change for me / you were scared to hurt me all this time / as you keep dealing cuts and blows / you get mad at me crying in the River North McDonalds / the morning after / “I can’t keep rewarding you for crying”/ but you want to still be friends / you want a medal for breaking up with me in person / because you just planned on leaving like a thief in the night / “I planned on distancing myself so you’d see I’m not that good of a guy” / even though you forced me to keep house / for someone who was never mine / the way I was yours / but I suppose I found comfort in the last hours / sitting in a burning house / if it meant feeling warmth /
Room 4
a thing I liked about you in the beginning / is now the thing killing me / because at the end of the day / you are a just a boy in your man body / what once was endearing / became / stubborn careless selfish cruel / and too cruel to break a heart in one blow / but instead breaking pieces off in inches / the way a child lets an ant
crawl on his palm / for fleeting novelty / I should have left you to greyhound back from Chicago / move your own shit out of my parents’ garage and my childhood bedroom / but no / I drive you back to Indiana with my mom / I tell her we’re breaking up at a Starbucks parking lot / she still cooked for you when we got back / I move you into your shitty new apartment off University St. / it must be home sweet home like Warsaw for you / because it’s another place for you to make a clean convenient breakaway from me / I tell you thanks for being my first love / you say you too / I drop you off outside Hodge Hall one last time / you still owe me $39 for gas / especially with this inflation / I try to be the bigger person / the / nice / cool / ex / for my sake / but who are we kidding / making myself as neat / tidy / palatable / pleasant / in hopes it would show you to choose me / but in actuality / neat / tidy / palatable / pleasant / did everything for you / nothing for me / you kept breaking off pieces / and pocketing them for yourself / still boyish even to the end / I ask with a whimper / “why are being so mean?”/ you say / “well we’re not dating anymore so”/ yet you check in on me / still called me over after your friends leave / patted the spot next to you on the couch / while Seinfeld’s on / played with my hair / you said you liked how it smells / put your hand on my knee / I’m not pretty or special to you / like how it was before / I’m just at your beck and call / in the palm of your hand / neat / tidy / palatable / pleasant / means beating on my chest / swallowing my anger down / as it tries to claw its way up my throat / for your comfort / for your convenience / your needs / your wants / I was beating on my chest / swallowing my anger down / choking down on my / Vietnamese diaspora body / swallowing down my / Woman body / choking down on my / wounded fawn body / in our two year blackout / but sure / you’re surprised I was so cold to you / when I saw you at the gym / I tell you off afterwards / and block you on everything / Linkedin and Spotify too / I throw your mattress box / your kettle / your mint green Target mug / your skateboard with the Bojack Horseman as Walter White Sticker I put on it / your size 11 Red Converse you left on purpose by my shoes / a box of your clothes / and I scream my rehearsed “Fuck You!” / down the stairs outside your / shitty new apartment with my friends / I come back alone for round two to throw your bike down the stairs / my therapist was proud of me when I told him about it in our next session / you ran out after me / that’s all I tell my friends about that Tuesday / only Jon knows the full story / you shove and grab me to stop me from leaving / I wish I punched you in your teeth / you demand answers for my anger / I stand by it / even with my wavering voice / you ask “is this really how you want to end things?” / no / but I never had a say in the matter / a neat / tidy / palatable / pleasant / break / was no longer an option / you don’t get the cool about it / good sport about it / ex-girlfriend / when you left me to bleed from July to September / and kept opening the wound / in your attempts to clean off what you could / of my bones / my mother’s anger / in fighting words / red hot tears / and locking bathroom doors to collect herself / did not get through to you / so my father’s / in clenched teeth / bruised knuckles / and scorched earth tactics / will /
Room 5
it’s only in mid-September / when I can finally feel clean of you / but I hate the click of lighters / I hate what follows rain / my shoulders jolt / thinking about the last time you touched me / I still have two of your sweaters in my closet / I still have some pictures of us on my phone / I let my friends talk all their shit / I let fair weather friends see themselves out / I read into tarot cards for signs you could come back / I learned that loving someone harder won’t make someone stay / or invite them to be tender with you / I learned I was better at keeping secrets / so long as they were yours to keep / I spit out every transgression you committed / because you’re no longer mine to protect / this time two years ago / is when we met / so now I’ll hate autumn for a while / especially late November / and December 8th will be a day of grief / rather than the celebration it was / you still have the cream white hair bow I left behind / the one I bought to feel good about myself for $8 / it’s been three months of a breaking / breakup / breakdown / and I still cry when I write about you in museum cafes / libraries at 11PM / I still find myself picking / myself / you / the relationship / apart / over / and / over / finding some new angle / I still look for you in every room I’m in / I know how to get to your apartment everywhere I go / in this town I have never really known / until you showed up in it / these feelings are too / big for me to hold / they’re too / big for every room I’m in / so I talk too much / I go on that nightly religious pilgrimage over the lake / write in my journal / work too much or not enough / do the breathing exercises / try to heal my inner child like Jon recommends in our sessions / he encourages me to be soft with all the girls I’ve been and carry with me / because she only wanted to be loved / her big feelings aren’t a curse / but I choke on my attempts to be gentle with myself / I keep picking the scab / looking through our keepsake box / I should leave well enough alone / mom told me to move on / but I need to remember to feel this hurt / remember it / so I never go back to the burnt house / just because that’s the warmth I’ve known / so I put the ashes / the musings / the travel knickknacks / the new breakthroughs / the old photos / the few notes you wrote / the what could have been / the what it actually was / the indignation / the broken glass I left for you to remember me by / everything / and I mean everything / because I don’t know how else to be / on a wall / and call it a gallery / maybe not leaving well enough alone / all the digging / digging / and digging / isn’t to pathologize / intellectualize / rationalize / what happened / but finally carve out the space I never had for my Vietnamese Diaspora Woman Wounded Fawn Body / and what she has to say / be soft without being punished / be ugly without being crucified / maybe it / isn’t to return to the life I wanted with you / but to return to me / and leave with her in hand / this ended up bigger than I planned / but that’s at least two rooms / maybe Frank will let me skip out on presenting if I just / explain the situation to him / send my slides to him