Artist Statement

Heike’s piece, entitled as Farewell Messages, reflects the complexities behind societal perceptions on next-door lovers worth pursuing. Its prose moves beyond, and asks for answer upon answer, even philosophy upon philosophy behind how we tell the difference between loves that rob us of our innocence from the kinds we could have had. More than the “date-able” from the “less date-able.”

Farewell Messages

To the boy—at twenty–who desired me,
But aimed to use me,
How dare you usurp my practicality,
Cherry pick me into pricked love amongst the sheet,
Pretending I’m fading out and in,
And not following your “test of desire?”
I want nothing with you.

I was twenty-one,
They were nineteen.
To the person that loved me,
How dare you dismiss our chance,
When our hearts were bound to be chased after?
I want everything,
Yet you want nothing.

No more than a multitude of months in,
I was twenty-one,
And he was twenty-three.
To your broken heart that once refrained to break,
You remarked the goddess that I knew spent spans of life inside.
Yet, I betray myself for betraying you.

I want everything.
This was the last,
As I never wanted your dreams flat
For the next boy that dared to love me back.

But now, I’m twenty-two,
He was twenty-one.

I want everything
Yet…
These days…
His heart keeps him
From the heaping urge
To latch unto my yearning.

These days…
Months…
Years from today…
I hope he heals with purpose
The same as a new seed will plant
In the garden of his subconscious,
Because I’ve seen how much it suffered enough degradation.