"In the Mood for Love"
Painting by Andrew C.C. Huang

"I Forgot"
Poem by Andrew C.C. Huang

When our path cross again, so unexpectedly the other day,
On that tattered street where everyone else bizarrely moved on with their lives,
A torrent of tempest washed over the sky and a tremor swept across the earth within one glance of your eyes

You asked me, why did I not stay?
Why did I not choose to share life with you?
I hesitated for a while before replying,
“I forgot.”

That hesitation lasted for an eternity
In which an old world was reopened by a chance encounter
And an old wound torn open by a question
Once we had promised eternity to each other
When you drowned in the lake of melancholia
I had rescued you with the pledge of eternal love

Once when the world seemed full of threatening tempest
We bravely shut out the menacing forces
To seek warmth in the sanctuary of our love
Once we had scorned at those ordinary beings
Who do not know what love is

How lucky we felt, that we had truly and deeply
surrendered ourselves to each other
Our scorn on the ordinary invited god’s punishment
For fate forbids the arrogance of our sacred exclusiveness of love
And we learned in such painful way,
That our eternal love could be so easily broken by the fleeting frets of the mundane world

Still, our pledge is never undone –
I continue to hear the echo of your giggle in every innocent laughters
And you continue to wonder why I had not chosen to share my life with you
But I did choose to be with you,
Only that my will could not combat against the force of fate

So when you asked me, so very casually, in that afternoon on the street
Why had I not stayed with you
Another eternity passed yet again in a few seconds
And all I could muster up to say was,
“I forgot.”