warning: suicide
On a Night Alone, I Have Nothing But My Own
There is nothing more beyond the door.
There is no kingdom of gods, no wonder, no more.
There is never going to be an Empress of Heaven. There was never before, and it will never be then, I will never find IF, WHERE, AND WHEN, I will never reach HERE, THERE, AND THEN.
There is no such thing as Holy, and I will never know home.
I dream of a house on stilts in the swamp. I dream of a Becoming.
In my house in the swamp,
- there is a deck on stilts, where I look at the mercurial fey, liquid-limb to liquid-limb, singing, and always having their way. The fey are divine, and in time, I, too, would have learned divinity
- But in my starling’s nest now, oh, can I only see: The End.
- I will never live long enough to see IF, WHERE, AND WHEN I could have contrived an escape, fashioned a key out of hairpin and jade to leave the gold bed, the shimmering cage. Oh, how, now, watch the starling sing—she does not sing like men, she does not sing of here, or everthen, she sings of Holy, but Of Holy, there nothing left.
- There are no gods above. There is nothing to become.
- With a deft enough hand, I could’ve shaken it. She, Amadeus-Her, could have left the gods in a sparkling fireplume of their own dry, glittering dust.
- But my hands no longer know the weight of scalpel. My hands no longer hold god inside them.
- I will never live long enough to see IF, WHERE, AND WHEN I could have contrived an escape, fashioned a key out of hairpin and jade to leave the gold bed, the shimmering cage. Oh, how, now, watch the starling sing—she does not sing like men, she does not sing of here, or everthen, she sings of Holy, but Of Holy, there nothing left.
I still yet have time, they will say.
He died in his prime,
He could’ve recovered someday,
they will say of Amadeus Vu.
But you and I, you and I, dear Holiness,
will know better.
Will you bring my body to the first floor
of the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN,
Fairy Sovereign? Lady, Lord?
If the door opens for me,
then I will see: I was wrong.
I was wrong, and there will always be
a hyacinth-shade of me: no legacy, forgotten.
Do You Know What Happens When You Cannot Find the Kingdom of the Divine
What happens is that there is nothing more, there is no sublime, there is nothing that will save you, nothing that will come in time. But do you know, when you find yourself on earthen floor, drinking honeysuckle, peach, lilydine; eating moss, dewberry, lime; swallowing orchid, lichen, ulamine. What happens is that you find the woods.
The Crescent Court waits for you,
you who the world has sundered
in two, cleft in twain like an apple
beneath the butcher’s knife.
You are not the surgeon anymore,
AMADEUS VU.
You are a stonefruit, heartsplit, beneath
the woodsman’s ax. Relax, relax,
AMADEUS VU, isn’t it all you ever wanted?
Isn’t it a relief from responsibility?
All you have to do now is
relax, and rest up,
UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE.
(and they wonder why you
tried to kill yourself.)
So you come here, to the court of the fey,
the moon-kingdom of THE FAIRY SOVEREIGN,
A singularity both
LADY and LORD
of time and every reversal,
for there is nothing
too immortal
for resurrection.
AMADEUS VU, peekaboo,
you found me, you found me!
[Now, what can I do for you?]
Please, Lady—Lord. Please havemercy.
Have mercy.
And let me into the night garden, you
said with a glint.
[Whatever will you do in there?]
[It is not a place for your kind.]
And what is that? you spat.
[Why don’t you tell me?]
Born sick from seed, raised well, but
rotting from silkstomach, milkliver, lacelung.
Thirty-five years of health. And then no
more, the wealth of life—forgotten, rotten,
rotten—and sick forevermore.
I was not like the others. My mother
was not like their mothers. My egg came
out cracked, shattered in a way you’ll never
get back. There was always something
wrong with me, you see. But no one knew.
Except the fairy few.
[So you’d like to be born anew? What will my lilies do
for you?]
I am what I am, and what I have always
been. Show me the door to the heavens,
the first floor
to the Kingdom of Gods.
Havemercy, Lady. Lord?
[Either-or.]
You can be the Lady of the Last, and I’ll be
the Lady of Glass.
[Will you shatter beneath me today? I’ll hold you sweetly,
and we can play
amidst glowing white lily,
stargazing moon.
The dew of jade,
and the planetary tide,
rising so soon.
I’ll feast on your flesh,
and in my flesh,
You will become Holy.]
Not today, Lady. You cannot have me
today.
[What shall I do for you until then,
pretty, pretty AMADEUS VU?]
(your breath caught so beautifully when
you knew:
through a death by divine consumption,
you could reach more than the
first floor
to the kingdom of
heaven.)
I swear to you,
if you let me live another day,
you may suck the marrow out of my bones,
and string pearl into my guts, roasting
hazelnut on a fire of my flesh.
[Then what shall I do for you today?]
Find me another way to live.
[It won’t be easy. And the pain will never go away. And you
will be tired.]
But it will be better than this. Better than what
mortal medicine, mortal hands could give. None
of them gave me a way to live. They all said
I wouldn’t.
They talked about
someday I might
simply wake up,
get better.
But more often they said
I’d see heaven.
[Just remember what you will pay
for the Fairy Sovereign to send you back a different way.]
Lady,
because of you,
I live anew.
[Let’s just see you don’t regret it.]
©2021 Xuan Nguyen
Xuan Nguyen || FEYXUAN is a disabled fey orchestral music composer, writer-poet, and illustrator-designer. Their recent projects have involved the solo development of aesthetic interactive fiction games exploring the nuances not exclusive to the following: power, trauma, madness, nonbinariness, divinity, and monstrosity. Their 2021 game project is Ochitsubaki (on Steam now). Their chapbooks include Lung, Crown, and Star (Dec 2020, Lazy Adventurer) and the upcoming The Fairies Sing Each to Each (Feb 2021, Flower Press), and their upcoming novella is Liar, Lionness (April 2021, Flower Press). Someday, they’d like to create something that makes them feel like Revolutionary Girl Utena does.