May Ling Su

May Ling Su find your poison

What’s your poison?

by

May Ling Su
in ,

I put on the antlers Jay bought me a few days ago. It made me happy to run around naked in the woods behind our house where many a herd of deer have passed through. I keep a pile of fruit and vegetable scraps at the edge of the wood year round, but winter is when the wild life need it most.

I hiked to the top of this cliff. Jay took my photos from the bottom of the rocky hill.

I went down on all fours like a beast, waving my invisible tail side to side. When I descended he covered me with his arms and told me I was beautiful.

We made love tenderly at first, then dirty, like animals. He filled me and filled me and filled me until I oozed delirious and he was spent.

I washed up, got dressed, and picked up our kid from school. I slid to the passenger seat to let her drive us home.

“How was your day?” I asked. She paused before she told me she had a weird day of not much happening in her classes, then at study hall her friend messaged to say that his dad died. He wasn’t ill. He just died. My daughter seemed deeply affected by that. It hit her hard to think that any day, without warning or indication, she could lose either one of her parents, too.

I took a proactive role and said that we should go get food for her friend’s family. We got a whole rotisserie chicken, a vegetable side dish, and yellow chrysanthemums. I told my daughter to text her friend to ask if we could come over with some food. He said yes.

By the time we got out of the grocery store, it was pouring really hard. My daughter drove in the rain to her friend’s house. It was a long way to Hope, which is the next town over from ours. She turned into a dirt road and up a hill. At the top of the hill is her friend’s house. His family had moved here from Illinois just a year ago. The car parked outside still has Illinois plates. Who knows what situation they are in now without the father?

My daughter wanted me to come along with her. She is so shy, my kid. We put on our masks and walked up to the house.

Her friend answered the door. He looked tired. His eyes were red and puffy.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, as I handed him the paper bag full of food.

He said, “None of us feel like cooking.”

“We figured,” I said. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t know what was right anymore. We ran back to the car to get out of the rain.

When we got home, my daughter baked me a birthday cake while Jay and I made dinner. We talked about life and love. We told stories and laughed. Underneath it all was the thought that death comes for us all, sooner or later. The question isn’t when, it’s how.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Attributed to Charles Bukowski

We all get to pick our poison. Some people choose alcohol, drugs, sugar. Others have an obsession with thinness and beauty. Then there are those whose passion becomes a poison, revolutionaries, workaholics, lovers of all kinds.

Jay always said he wanted a beautiful woman to kill him. She could be me, killing him slowly, one headache, one heartache, at a time. If my life was a painting, I’ve already messed up the canvas, made many mistakes and accumulated regrets for inaction. It’s time to pull together all the loose ends, the painful lessons, the dark memories of my life and transform it into a beautiful work of art.

That night, as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I wished for more time to love him the way he wants to be loved as a unique and extraordinary human. I’ve only just begun to learn how.

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

May Ling Su signature

P.S. See the full photo set at MAYCAM.

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