Chen Chen > Quotes

“On Earth lately, I’ve been looking at everyone
like I love them, & maybe I do. Or maybe I only love
one person, & I’m beaming from it. Or actually
I just love myself, & I want people to know.”
― Chen Chen

“Maybe the centipede in the cellar
knows with its many disgusting legs
why I am sad. No one else does.”
― Chen Chen

“I tried to ask my parents to leave the room,
but not my life. It was very hard. Because the room was the size
of my life. Because my life was small.
[...]
Raising one’s voice in a small space
felt at once godlike & childish.”
― Chen Chen

“I wish I could feel your warmth, as easily
as I feel his. But I don't. I feel fear. I hear fear telling me I'm

a body, that's all. & the boy I love is a body. & bodies die. No
other world, no return to this world in another form. (Annihilation.)

It isn't that I didn't think these were the facts before. It's now,
he's here. I have to try harder. Believe the facts could be

at least a little wrong. Please, something. Some
magic, real as this ripe life with him.”
― Chen Chen

“I hope to one day write something as beautiful as Sailor Moon’s catchphrase, “In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!” Though my abolitionist politics would revise that to: “In the name of the moon, let’s fight for nonpunitive forms of justice!”
― Chen Chen

“My mother was in the hospital
& I didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said. even when
I do the list for you. Even then.”
― Chen Chen

“Does your mother love you
all the time? Have you ever doubted?”
― Chen Chen

“What is it, to remember nothing, of what one loved?”
― Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

“I wish I could write an elegy for my sadness
because it has suddenly died.”
― Chen Chen

“Sometimes you just want to give up. Then you remember why you live.”
― Chen Chen

“[My parents] said, So what
if we misspell "auditorium," so fucking what -
we'll always say
your name right”
― Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

“You climb back in bed & touch my face. You climb back in bed to touch my face. You wrap your arms around me & it’s like you’re the patron saint if touch as well as soft sunlight & soothed dogs. Or you must be the earthly representation of divine holding. Or you’re both & a boy, like me, holding on.”
― Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

“In this economy
of acute magpie syndrome. Where "just a hobby" is the strongest industry. & we work overtime at our reverie.
My weakness is loving this economy.”
― Chen Chen

“Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”

Which really means “queer kids who could go online & learn that queer doesn’t have to mean disaster.”

Or dead.

Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.”
― Chen Chen

“If we could communicate fully, there would be no need to communicate. If we could love perfectly, there would be no need to love. If we could finish grieving, there would be no need to live. If we could touch completely, there would be no need.”
― Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

“she had to say, You better not lose him. & my mother kept that promise
till she couldn’t, she lost me, in the new country, but doesn’t
that happen to all parents & their children, one way or another,
& don’t we need to get lost? Lost, dizzy, stubbly, warm, stumbling,
whoa—that’s what it felt like, 17, kissing a boy for the first time.
Can’t forget it. Can’t forget when my mother found out & said,
This would never have happened if we hadn’t come to this country.
But it would’ve happened, every bit as dizzy, lost, back in China.
It didn’t happen because of America, dirty Americans. It was me,
my need. My father said, You have to change, but I couldn’t, can’t
give you up, boys & heat, scruff & sweet. Can’t get over you. Trying to get
over what my writer friend said, All you write about is being gay or Chinese.
Wish I had thought to say to him, All you write about is being white
or an asshole. Wish I had said, No, I already write about everything—
& everything is salt, noise, struggle, hair,
carrying, kisses, leaving, myth, popcorn,
mothers, bad habits, questions.”
― Chen Chen

“I know: in a dream, the tea could stay forever the exact right
drinking temperature & I never want

that. I want the debauched
joy of everyday bumbles & flops”
― Chen Chen

“Then even your most stubborn muscle grows weary, & sends it
whirling through your bloodstream & your blood carries it,
everywhere in your body at once, so there is no more moving.
So you sit, on the floor of the toy store, like the end
of an avalanche, each rock, tree, & small wish of you
crushed, heaped. & the scream of your total defeat
is the cry that brought the mountain down.”
― Chen Chen

“I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time
fall completely apart & everyone just says, It’s raining,
& someone might even bring cats & dogs into it,
no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see
a professional.”
― Chen Chen

“In recent years my work has been praised for transcending identity categories. I know this is a well-intentioned compliment, and I feel fortunate to be read with enthusiasm. But I wonder if a white dude has ever been praised for transcending his white dudery.”
― Chen Chen

“Because I was reading today
in the science section of the paper that passionate love
lasts only a year, maybe two, if you're lucky.

Because I want to be extra lucky. Because the article
apologized specifically to poets - sorry, you hopeless
saps - as though we automatically believe in love more

than anyone else (more than kindergarten teachers, long-haired
carpenters) & have been pushing this Non-Truth
on everyone. Because who knows what will happen,

but I want to, baby, want to believe it's always possible
to love bigger & madder, even after two, three, four years,
four decades. I want a love as dirty as a snowball fight

in the sludge, under grimy yellow lights. I want this winter
inside my lungs. Inside my brain & dream. I want to eat
the unplowed street & fog that's been erasing

evergreens. I want to eat the fog only to discover
it's some giant's lost silver blanket. I want to
find the giant & return to him his treasure.

I want the journey to be long. & strange, like a map
drawn in snow by our shadows shivering. I want to shiver
against you, into you.”
― Chen Chen

“TALKING TO GOD ABOUT HEAVEN FROM THE BED OF A HEATHEN

You should know that although I miraculously
agreed to attend Bible camp one summer (my devoutly
pragmatic parents signed me up because the camp was free),
I don’t & have never believed in you. Yet here I am:
sitting up in bed, thinking about death, & needing
to talk to someone who (reportedly) has the inside story.
I know, though, that there are believers who don’t believe
out of fear solely. They actually love you. They reach out
& receive your touch. Like a friend, like a boyfriend, like the boy
beside me, overheating, reeking of sweat, & still (somehow)
asleep. I wish I could feel your warmth, as easily
as I feel his. But I don’t. I feel fear. I hear fear telling me I’m
a body, that’s all. & the boy I love is a body. & bodies die. No
other world, no return to this world in another form. (Annihilation.)
It isn’t that I didn’t think these were the facts before. It’s that now,
he’s here. I have to try harder. Believe the facts could be
at least a little wrong. Please, something. Some
magic, real as this ripe life with him.”
― Chen Chen

“The next day you will tell your father, You were wrong to say that I had to change.

To make me promise I would. To make me promise.

& promise.”
― Chen Chen

“On Earth Lately, I've been looking at everyone like I love them, and maybe I do. Or maybe I only love one person, and I'm beaming from it. Or actually, I just love myself, and I want people to know.”
― Chen Chen

“For every minute you are sad, you are losing a whole 60 seconds of happiness.”
― Chen Chen

“You row, the growing light rearranging your voice, the
rain your lunatic photographer.”
― Chen Chen

“let me stay tender-hearted, despite despite despite”
― Chen Chen

“But the sorrow is held by your heart now, your own
exquisite machine that seems finally to contain it.
Then even your most stubborn muscle grows weary, & sends it
whirling through your bloodstream & your blood carries it,
everywhere in your body at once, so there is no more moving.
So you sit, on the floor of the toy store, like the end
of an avalanche, each rock, tree, & small wish of you
crushed, heaped. & the scream of your total defeat
is the cry that brought the mountain down.”
― Chen Chen

“I’m envious of jealous God because although he’s been / dead for ages, everyone keeps caring about him, or at least / saying his name, & God knows who’ll do that for me, / ten, twenty years after I go.”
― Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

“I’m trying out this thing where questions about love & forgiveness
are a form of work I’d rather not do alone. I’m trying to say,
Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain,
& continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.”
― Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities