Brett Yang has a few unsent letters for Eddy Chen, talking about things be usually wouldn't. It gets forgotten since they've been married for ten years now.

Brett's POV

March 7, 2010

Dear Eddy,

Everything comes with a price. Even if you are triumphant, there is a sense of emptiness after you have conquered what you thought you were supposed to. The void does not get filled unless you have found what you have been longing for. Some people never knew what love was until the day that they die.

They say that love, truth, beauty and freedom will fill the void. The love poems of writers, the truth in love, the beauty of love and the liberation felt with love; they say that love will fill the void. Isn't it just an excuse to find something just so you can't be empty?

From a writer's perspective, these are all the things that will make you feel full, completed even. My logical side tells me that anything could fill the void as long as you believe that it does. Maybe it's true. I can choose the illusion of the truth effect to live but it does not justify that nothing can truly fill the emptiness inside of us. It is not pessimism, rather it's the truth.

Even if I know that nothing fills the void, I still succumb myself to poetry. I still succumb myself to romanticizing and manipulating words just so I could fill the emptiness of other people. Being empty is not a reason to let other people feel the same way.

I want you to hold on to something that seems real. I hold onto my writings because it feels like the realest thing in the universe.

Sincerely yours,

Brett Yang

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September 24, 2010

Dear Eddy,

The heaviness of it all consumes me. It makes me feel alive. It seems as though those words are my blood flow, those words are my oxygen, those words are the butterflies in my stomach, those words are my headache, those words are my heartbreak, but those words, they are not me. Those words are simply masks that conceal me from this cruel world. I am allowing myself to feel liberation from the words.

Eddy, it all comes down as to why I've allowed myself to be like this. I want to say that I'm doing this for everyone else, but I would be lying. I know that I'm doing it for myself. To feel same, to keep me stable, stay grounded; all of this so I could feel human. Let me just say that you're the best thing in keeping me alive but I know I can't hold on to you. You're in love with another.

I even went and wrote poetry about him, the one that I have claimed to love. Little did I know that you're truly the one I love. My friends tell me that I'm always the poet and never the poem. Eddy, I don't like being written down or maybe the fact that poetry is too beautiful to be me.

When you try to write a poem about me, it will be far from beautiful and majestic. Poems are about anything and I'm a poem that cannot be started, finished nor read. I write the poems because it's easier that way.

I know the feeling of being a poem. He tried so hard to make it beautiful, to make it art. It never turned out like that, though. It turns out that I'm more like phrases, impromptus said while angry and words that are incoherent after hours of crying. I am an incomplete thought that's only complete with the thought of you. I am chaos and reality.

Nothing more, nothing less. Just that, Eddy. Just that.

Sincerely yours,

Brett Yang

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January 25, 2011

Dear Eddy,

I won't allow myself to be written again. That person who wrote about me is now somewhere out there, Eddy. Somewhere out there in the cold, even if it's summer. He is somewhere out there, regretting even writing about me.

He is somewhere out there, meeting a better person to love him. I'm not saying that I broke him because I loved him deeply, because I didn't. He wasn't a plaything, either. He was just another poem that didn't make the final collection.

Eddy, he wasn't the poem. My collection is filled with nothing but you. I don't know why I even thought someone could compare to you. Or even live up to you.

He was simply a draft. I'm sure I didn't break him, I just wounded him. Deep enough to leave a scar but not feel enough to kill him. He was looking for a home and I welcomed him into mine. (Even if I knew that my home was filled with memorabilia of you everywhere.)

I warned him about the fact that my home does not have heaters or fireplaces and it's always cold. (I tried to warn him about your memorabilia, but he pretended to be blind towards it.) He said that he would be fine because he's in love with the cold and is used to it.

So, I let him in. I told him that I didn't build fires because it causes me headaches and it makes me feel suffocated. He built a small fire and I was okay with it. It was merely a candlelight.

Suddenly, the fire grew. When all the wax was melted, I did not know that he left it on a wooden table. I was okay with it at first because the little warmth felt nice. I was getting used to it. When the fire was strong, it didn't melt the ice. The fire just burned him (and the remnants of your memorabilia in my home). When I put it out, he was left with the cold (and I was left with nothing of your memorabilia).

I told him about how fires had already ruined my home. My house that I built with you was equipped with multiple heaters and fireplaces. When it burned down, I built my house without them. I knew that I wouldn't want warmth unless it was supplied by you. The ice built up because you started a forest fire. I don't want to be incinerated again, not when it isn't you.

I warned him, he was careful but not careful enough. So, there. I will never be the poem again. The poems that are created in the image of me are more like curses than artworks. The poems are more like eulogies than declarations of love.

He didn't understand why it ended up like that, but I did. (I knew that I'm extra colder because he burned down my memorabilia of you.) I do not want it to turn out that way, but it did. (He pretended to not see the memorabilia for you.)

This is why I never allowed another person to make me into poetry. (unless it you're the one to do it.)

Sincerely yours,

Brett Yang

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March 18, 2011

Dear Eddy,

It sounds better when the poems I have written are read aloud.

Let's go back to why everything comes with a price. The first person I've ever written a poem about is now more like a brother to me. The second person is at least 200 kilometers away from me and now has a job. The third person I wrote poetry about is now madly in love with a girl that play the flute. The fourth person I wrote poetry about was happily married and had two daughters. The fifth person I wrote about is somewhere out there, feeling the cold no matter what season it is.

Did I end up with any of them?

Almost but in glad I didn't end up with him. You're still the subject of my final collection poems. I don't minds that you don't love me this way, Eddy. I'm just glad that I have you. I never regret anything that I've done but it doesn't mean that I didn't feel guilty walking away from the fifth guy. I don't have to worry, though.

Everything heals with time and I'm not remarkable. He will forget me and the poetry. I just hope he threw the poem that I wrote about him.

God knows I can't throw my poem collection of you out.

Sincerely yours,

Brett Yang

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October 27, 2011

Dear Eddy,

My story or poems do not end up triumphant. It's more like the ending of a non-fiction book. The ending is not necessarily an ending but a closure. I believe that my stories are just closures. Multiple closures that are somehow open-ended.

One thing never changed, though.

I still love you, Edward Chen. After all those years, you're still my home. (Even if you are home in another's arms.) I love you so much, you wouldn't even know how many stories and poems I've dedicated just to get by.

Everything I am, ends in the middle of a sentence. An incomplete thought, impromptus said while angry and words that are incoherent after hours of crying; just like the first poem ever written about me. I am simply all that. I am simply yours. So, this is my ending.

"I'm so in love with you, Eddy. You wouldn't even..."

Sincerely yours,

Brett Yang