Mai Ho

“I wanted to board the plane with you, to show our boarding passes to the flight attendant together, sit side by side and talk until I put my head on your shoulder as you read and slept, and then wake up to together and listen to music, watch a movie, go to the bathroom… Maybe we’d fall asleep again then wake up to another meal only slightly more appetising than the first and watch the shifting cloud formations outside the window together, and hear the captain announcing that we were about to land in Hong Kong, about to land in Malaysia, about to land in Paris…

Do I think too much? All I really want is to fly with you.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Last Words from Montmartre

“We try to preserve life, even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Love is not merely need alone, & what is more important is loving you, & making my true nature comprehensible to you.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Last Words from Montmartre

“I can’t stand the thought of you walking in the desert. I want to give you a little patch of solid ground to stand on, or at the very least some small green oasis you can look at in the distance, to keep you from drifting away from reality, from escaping back into your mind. It’s all my fault! I missed my chance. But let me see if—using these words as a little plot of land and my life as a cornerstone—I can build you a center.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Last Words from Montmartre