Photography by Sam Cheuk
Or so the collective chant goes,
but no, ideas are not bulletproof,
they can be usefully forgotten.
What did you do a month ago?
Truth is, I want you to be safe,
want you to sleep so I can sleep.
It’s why I can never be a parent,
loving a brat like you.
No, ideas are not bulletproof.
They don’t break because
they are not true, they break
with age, with convenience.
It’s not what you want to hear,
it’s not what I want to tell,
but here we are, looking
into each other as tho
we don’t recognize who
we were to each other.
It’s not what you want to bear,
but here we are, here at last.
Sam Cheuk is a Hong Kong-born Canadian poet and author of Love Figures (Insomniac Press, 2011), Deus et Machina (Baseline Press, 2017), and the upcoming collection Postscripts from a City Burning (Palimpsest Press, 2021) on the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and their aftermath. He holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and a BA in English literature from the University of Toronto. He is currently working on the second half of the diptych, tentatively titled Marginalia, that examines the function, execution, and generative potential behind censorship. #香港人加油 #StandWithHongKong