by Laura Mota-Juang
after Happy Together, directed by Wong Kar-wai.
It should have been our beginning: a wonder
to witness
together , eighty
metres of
waterfall,
loud noises covering
any doubts
we might have of
each other.
Let’s start over.
Let’s start over.
I had to finish our plans
before moving forward
for myself.
I had no way of knowing until now.
The absolute conclusion is
long and slow;
it is preceded
by tarrying.
This slowness should be acknowledged
as a method of violence.
How can a plan for two
be completed by one?
From here, I know
there will be no return to complicity.
Let’s start over,
I hear you or the water crashing.
The birds come out of the droplets cloud
like flying ashes.
Birds like ashes de pasión mortal morían.
I thought that from our destination, I would see a possibility.
And I found the gravity of what wasn’t from the beginning.
It grows in me the knowledge that never again I will hear your words, Let’s start over.
* (a) “the absolute conclusion is long and slow; it is preceded by tarrying” is borrowed from Byung-Chul Han, in The Agony of Eros.
(b) “de pasión mortal morían” is borrowed from the song “Cucurrucucú” by Pedro Infante, performed in Happy Together by Caetano Veloso.
Laura Mota-Juang
Laura Mota-Juang is a Taiwanese-Brazilian multimedia artist based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. Her writing has been published by PRISM International, carte blanche, Held Magazine, ANMLY, and elsewhere. She is the author of Light Spill (Block Party Press 2023), a chapbook inspired by Physic’s imagination. Laura was a finalist QWF’s carte blanche Prize in 2023.