The Price of Starlight

 On this summer night, the sky called to me—
not softly, not politely,
but like the way a lover calls,
a pull I could not resist.

So I stepped out,
letting the stars blanket me—
bright, infinite,
as the air hummed with wings
and mosquitoes found my skin.

Still, I lingered.
Because love always costs something.
And what are a few stings,
compared to a sky
drenched in stars?

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Between Prayer & Spell

A reflection on intention, return, and the wisdom in my mother’s tongue.

Some words are not meant to be shouted.
They belong in the hush —
between prayer and spell —
where the heart’s intention moves quietly through the unseen.

This piece was born from one of my mother’s sayings,
a truth carried in Vietnamese that feels different in the mouth
and heavier in the soul:

"Nợ tình yêu, sẽ trả bằng tình yêu.
Nếu bạn nợ nỗi đau, sẽ trả bằng nỗi đau."

To owe love will be repaid in love.
To owe pain will be repaid in pain.

It is the wisdom she left in my keeping,
and the compass that guided these words.

There are words you do not speak in daylight.
They are meant for the hush between heartbeats,
for the space between prayer and spell.

I release them tonight —
not for vengeance,
but for balance.
For the quiet law that what we send out
will pass through the universe and the unseen
before it returns.

My mother’s voice still walks beside me:
"Nợ tình yêu, sẽ trả bằng tình yêu.
Nếu bạn nợ nỗi đau, sẽ trả bằng nỗi đau."

This is a piece born from that vow.

Some truths are not ours to enforce.
We release them,
trusting the universe and the unseen
to shape what comes next.

I do not know where my words will travel,
or whose hands they will pass through along the way.
I only know they leave me with purpose,
and will return —
in whatever form is meant.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

No One’s Priority

She did not seek this shadowed truth,
It crept in slow, without sharp proof—
Like a bruise beneath the quiet skin,
Deepening softly, from within.

No storm, no shouts to split the air,
Just the subtle ache of not being there—
Of being passed, overlooked, unseen,
A ghost in the corner where life had been.

She’d made her peace with the background hum,
Filling the spaces when others were numb,
Mending wounds they never confessed,
Loving in silence, giving her best.

Yet something shifted when the words were said,
“You’re not the priority”—they rang in her head.
Not the first time the truth had shown,
But the first time it stood, and claimed its own.

Threads of memory began to unwind,
A pattern too tangled for chance to design.
But this is not where the hope departs—
It is the place where knowing starts.

The woman now, with tea in hand,
Learns her worth is not demand—
Not in the rush of another’s need,
But in the quiet where her soul is freed.

Love is not withheld; it’s redefined,
By the way she shows up, time after time.
No longer waiting to be called in,
But choosing herself, again and again.

And maybe this is how stories turn,
In the gentle places where embers burn—
When the crown is made of the quiet and true,
And the first priority is you.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Echo of Unlovable

The question came in the quiet after a storm—
not the weathered kind,
but the kind that breaks behind closed doors,
where relationships strain in the silence.

“Why are we not lovable?”

He asked it with the weariness of a man unspooling.
She answered as a mother—
confused, searching for footing,
trying to patch his pain with soft reassurance.

“What do you mean?” she asked,
as if clarification might soften the truth.
As if her own ribs hadn’t just buckled.

But he meant it.
He meant her, too.
He saw her aloneness and named it something ugly: unwanted.
And it shattered something she thought had healed.

She’d long believed her solitude was a choice,
a sacred quiet she carried on her own terms.
But his words remapped the landscape,
made her doubt the truth she’d crafted so carefully.

Does being alone mean being unlovable?
Is that how the world sees her—
a woman full of love
with no one to hand it to?

The question wasn’t just his.
It was the question of her lineage,
of every woman in her family
who waited to be seen.

She didn’t know whether he was naming his pain,
or reflecting hers,
or if both had always been tangled.

What she knew was this:
she never wanted him to carry her ache.
She thought she’d kept it hidden,
buried beneath strong shoulders and light-hearted laughter.

But pain has a scent.
And children know how to follow it,
even when no one points to the trail.

She tried to recall the first time she wondered if she was unlovable—
maybe at fifteen,
when her father chose someone else.
Maybe every time silence met her vulnerability
with nothing but a nod and a turned back.

She wanted to shield her son.
But maybe shields are see-through.
Maybe protection is never perfect.

Maybe this is the wound we pass on:
the belief that love must be earned,
that worth is something to prove.

And maybe that’s the cruelest myth—
because it asks us to beg
for what should be ours by birthright.

In that moment,
when he said the words,
she broke—
not because she believed him,
but because some part of her did.

And she hated that.

She asked God not for answers,
but for a reason why she carries this love
that no one stays long enough to hold.

It is an ugly thought—
to feel unwanted,
to ask if all this feeling
was a design flaw.

But she sits with it.
And maybe that’s where the healing starts:
not in denying the ache,
but in naming it.
And letting it echo—
until it becomes something softer,
something truer,
something that no longer lies.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Intruder Who Loves Card Games

Most days, I fill the room just fine—
me, my music, my ink-stained hands,
painting silence into stories.
Company enough.

But then,
an intruder I didn’t invite
slips into the chair that isn’t there,
shuffling a deck of cards
like we’ve played this game for years.

Loneliness isn’t loud.
It doesn’t slam doors or demand tears.
It just sits,
waiting,
reminding me of old tables,
small gatherings,
laughter that once filled the air
like it was stitched into the walls.

And yet—
it isn’t always an ache.
Sometimes it’s a nudge,
a soft tap on the shoulder
saying,
“You’re human, remember?”

People see aloneness and assume emptiness.
But I’ve learned the two dance differently.
Still—
when the intruder cuts the deck
and deals me in,
I remember:
solitude is choice.
Loneliness… is just a guest
who doesn’t always knock.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

The Myth of Enough (a mother’s reckoning)

I did everything different.
Broke the blueprint,
rewrote the vows handed down in silence.
I chose softness where there was stone.
I offered words where there had been withdrawal.
I gave and gave and gave
until the giving itself became the prayer.

And still…
they ache.
Still, I see the flicker of pain
behind their eyes,
the old ghost that somehow found them,
despite all my guarding.

It guts me—
to know that love isn't a shield,
that even the fiercest mother
cannot undo what life insists on teaching.

So I sit in the ache,
not as punishment,
but as ritual.
I let it sting,
because some wounds
deserve to be honored before they’re released.

Maybe there is no right way.
No sacred formula.
Maybe all of us—
the mothers, the daughters,
the sons, the wanderers—
are just trying to find the thread
between too much and not enough.

And maybe, just maybe,
healing isn’t the erasure of pain,
but the choice to love anyway.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

A Razor Between Faith and Madness —a reckoning in quiet ache—

She crosses over,
knowing there’s a cost—
but longing outweighs caution.
She needs more than silence,
more than the echo of her own breath.

She needs proof—
that it isn’t all in her head,
that the veil is thin,
and the dead still watch.

She begs the hush of night,
beckons her mother’s ghost
with hands folded like prayer
and desperation.

She wants what she can’t name—
a truth big enough
to quiet the ache,
to explain why
she always comes last.

She’s tired of drowning quietly.
Tired of whispering her name
into empty rooms
where no one comes for her.

So she tries—
to rescue herself,
to become her own first choice.

But the war inside is cruel.
One part of her clings to sorrow—
a familiar ghost
she’s learned to cradle.

The other part rages against it,
because this kind of ache
hollows the bones,
starves the soul.

She cries out into the beyond,
break the rules,
just once—
show me a sign.

Tell me I mattered.
That I was enough.
That I was loved—
not for performance,
but for presence.

Insanity or faith—
she walks the blade.
A razor between
what is seen
and what is hoped for.

She’s not the only one.
This ache runs in blood—
a ghost-trail,
passed down quietly,
generation after generation.

And the cruelest ache of all:
there is no recording of her mother’s voice.
Only absence where comfort once lived.
She would know it—
if she heard it—
but can no longer summon the sound.

Some parts of life are tender.
But others—
wicked.
Sharp.
Unrelenting.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Depends on the Night (fragments of a confession)

Two shots in, in a smoke-filled room,
the music sways like a promise half-kept.
She sits in shadow,
not hiding—just waiting
for the night to forget her name.

A man in the corner lights another cigarette
with hands that remember more than he says.
Their eyes catch—not collide—
soft recognition or maybe just the drink
playing games with memory.

She isn’t there to be touched.
She’s there to disappear,
to let the amber burn offer
just one hour
where the ache doesn't speak so loudly.

Her thoughts spiral,
back to a grandfather who adored her—
now a ghost of memory
she left behind in a country
she barely remembers.

She tried reaching her nephew,
who slipped into the beyond
on a night too heavy with haze
to know what was choice and what was chance.

But it was her mother who arrived—
not in form,
but wings pressed against the window screen,
a butterfly visitor,
staying only long enough to say: I see you.

Grief sits beside her,
not sharp, but familiar.
Some deaths happen in spirit,
others in truth—
when the version of someone you loved
was only ever who you hoped they were.

Four shots in,
the music dims and smoke lingers.
He leans in, eyes tired but open.

“Who do you miss the most?”

She exhales slow,
her voice a whisper curling in the air—
“It depends on the night.”

And some nights,
the only one listening
is the dark itself.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Letters Unsent

Some letters are never meant to be sent.
They are a ritual, a reckoning,
a release.

There is something sacred
when pen meets paper—
the page absorbs
what the mouth can’t say.

I have journals lined in silence,

some pages no one will ever read,

some turned to fragments—

ripped, gathered,

kept in a glass vase,

like wildflowers

wilting in time.

Is it quieting my voice, or guarding the truth?
I want my words to heal—
to be light.
I know what the dark ones do.
Some stay lodged,
circling back on heavy nights.

So I write with intention.
To get lost.
To remember.

Letters across time,
across people.
One reads: I really thought we had more time…
Another: If I am too much,
and must be taken in pieces...

I don’t want to be your antibiotic.
I want to be your addiction.

Maybe that’s the only way I’ve known love—
urgent, all or nothing.
I know it’s flawed,
a cognitive distortion,
but it’s mine.
 

Some letters ask why.
Some beg to be rewritten.
Some earn the silence
they’re now buried in.

No, I haven’t kept them all—
only the ones that still breathe,
the ones I may one day
tell the truth to.

And the rest?
Ripped.
Released.
Unsent.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

THE COMPANION a monologue in rain.

Scene: A room without walls. Rain falls beyond the edge of everything. The air is heavy. The sky is fighting itself. A woman sits, watching. Another presence — the Companion — sits beside her, silent but near.

SELF
The rain has been falling for days.
The earth is saturated.

I feel saturated —
as if something ancient is beginning to rise from the soil,
something I buried long ago,
believing it would never return.

I sit and watch the rainfall.
I watch others.
And sometimes…
I watch myself —
interacting with others, with life, with the rainfall.

There’s a darkness beside me.
She hasn’t said a word.
But I feel her.

I get lost in the sound of raindrops,
in the light trying to break through clouds —
like the sky itself can’t decide
what it wants to feel.

COMPANION
You buried me.
But I never left.

SELF
I know.

COMPANION
Do you think of him often?

SELF
Yes.
(It doesn’t matter which him.)
They all haunt the same hall.

SELF (trying to deflect)
Why do you still come around?

COMPANION (laughs — a sound like something breaking and something remembered)
Because you’d never move toward the light
if I didn’t exist.

(Silence. Rain.)

NARRATION / STAGE DIRECTION
She does not comfort.
She does not destroy.

She simply is —
the weight that makes me crave flight,
the chill that teaches me to kindle fire.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Fallacies & Memories

 —a truth in fragments—

I write because it's the surface that absorbs my tears without judgment or question.

I write because it’s an addiction that lets me feel— instead of go numb.

I write because my mind is never quiet. I write to stop the hemorrhaging of my aching heart.

I write because the moon calls to me— and I must.

I write because I was only fifteen, and he should’ve known better.

I write because the logic of my life twists into fallacies, and nothing makes sense.

I write because I pray. I write to be misunderstood by most and understood by few.

I write to root myself— to breathe beneath the noise.

I write so I can get lost in something good.

I write because I remember. I write because… Mom, I really just needed to be held— just once.

I write because… sister, I cherish those memories of summer nights and fireflies.

I write because she built a ghost of what I said, then struck it down with fire and pride.

I write because you never touched the thought I gave, just tore the hand that held it out.

As if my name could soil the truth, or silence what the soul might shout.

I write because wisdom isn’t passed by titles— it’s carved by time and earned by light.

I write because you said I had to choose the edge— to burn or break, to win or die.

I write so I don’t burn it all down.

I write because…

I am.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Drenched in Presence

a devotion to rain

I love the rain in all her moods.
When lightning cracks open the sky—
I count the seconds,
wait for thunder’s roar to answer.

I love the boom, the shake of heaven,
the storm that says, I am here.

I love when it comes gentle,
a hush, a whisper,
barely more than a breath
against the cheek of the world.

I love when it weeps—
steady, aching,
as if the sky remembers something it lost
long ago.

And when it pours fierce—
drenching, cleansing,
pulling me into wild communion—
I stand there,
head tilted to the gray,
welcoming every drop.

Rain doesn’t ask.
It arrives as it is.
And I love her for that.
Every part of her.
Every softness, every storm.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Raised by Absence, Held by Light

Some words come from the child,
some from the woman she became.

They say daughters are easy to love when they’re quiet—
but what if you loved her even when she roared?

She is born wild with wonder.
Don’t tame her to be loved.
Love her, as she is—
always.

To love a daughter
is to hold her storms
without asking them to shrink.

Be her safe place.
Her harbor in the storm.
The world will teach its lessons—
your love should not be one of them.

Dad—
your choices
shaped the shadows
I had to walk through.

Creator,
thank you for being the face,
the name,
the role—
of father
while I walked that journey.
Thank you for never
leaving me alone.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Elm Park | 1988

It was an age when the world still felt like a secret waiting to be overheard.

Evening walks in the cool hush of New England air.
A boy at her side, his hand warm in hers,
but her mind wandered beyond their words—
drifting toward the trees, the hush of water beneath the bridges,
the architecture of old stones that remembered.

There was a building—
Ivy-cloaked, ancient, reverent.
It pulled at her from the inside,
something magnetic in its silence,
a calling she couldn’t yet name.
It stirred in her a kind of ache—not pain,
but the ache of being known by something
you haven’t met yet.

They would walk for hours like this,
his voice weaving in and out of her attention,
while her soul scanned the sky.
The sun setting behind cathedral spires,
the moon arriving like an old friend
who spoke a language only she could hear.

Even then,
she knew she loved the symmetry of dawn and dusk—
but it was the moon she worshipped.
Especially when full.
Especially when rising.
It whispered through her,
a quiet electricity
that would follow her all her life.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Monologue #7: The First Time I Met God

I don’t often write about God.
Not because I don’t feel Him—but because what I feel is too intimate, too sacred, to perform. My relationship with the Divine has never been for display. It has been personal, winding, and at times too fragile to name.

But a message found me. A fellow writer, a kindred spirit—I only know them by the name they chose to share, the rest was woven into their words. They told me my writing held a kind of honesty that stopped them, that it felt like truth they could touch. They said they recognized something familiar in my voice—something kindred. And that recognition stirred something deep in my spirit.

Because I believe souls do find each other. And I believe God, the universe, whatever language your soul speaks, orchestrates these meetings in ways we never fully understand. That message became a mirror, and I saw it was time. Time to tell this story.

The first time I met God officially, I was 18.
Pentecostal. Seeking. Trembling.
I gave my life to Him in a small church with loud music and louder praise. I was baptized, claimed, saved. And for what I needed then—structure, direction, a place to put my hope—it worked. For a time.

But I walked away. I came back. I wandered. I questioned.
I tried temples. I sat in cathedrals. I stood in the back rows of Catholic churches with my mother’s rituals on my tongue.

I looked for God in incense, in stained glass, in scripture. I looked in every space built by men to house the holy.

But I never found Him in the buildings.
I found Him in the quiet.
In the in-between.

And then, eventually, I found Him in me.

Over time—over years of praying, pleading, forgetting, and returning—I began to hear something softer than doctrine. In conversations with God, I felt a truth rise up like breath:

How can you separate yourself from Me?
I am with you. You are with Me.

It undid me.
Because I realized what I had been chasing wasn’t God’s love—not exactly.
I was chasing self-acceptance, safety, wholeness.
I wanted God to love me because I didn’t know how to love myself.

But the Divine is not separate. And the love I was searching for
was already embedded in me.

God is love. And love begins within.

It took time. Years of wandering and return, of forgetting and remembering—
to begin truly living this. Not perfectly. Not fully.
But with enough clarity to see—

It wasn’t about the structures or the rituals, though I once sought shelter there.
It was always drawing me inward— toward communion, not performance.

I share this not as teaching— but as a moment. A soul unfolding.

If you’re seeking, keep walking.
If you’re doubting, keep asking.
And if you’re aching—
know the ache itself is sacred.
It may whisper through stillness,
or in the kind words of a stranger.
To the soul who sent me that message—
thank you.
Your words were a divine appointment.
You reminded me:
Honesty matters.
Kindness matters.
Being seen matters.

So this is where I met God.

Not just once.

But again and again—

In the quiet.

In the questions.

In the reflection.

In me.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

What Her Hands Never Said

She didn’t say “I love you” in ways that stories like to write.
She argued. She stitched. She criticized. She sewed.

She made quilts out of the scraps of our childhood clothes—
Hands busy at the sewing machine.
Hands that taught me my creative blood runs deep.

We didn’t talk much, and when we did, it was sharp.
But now I see her more clearly.
In cardinals. In moths.
In my own mannerisms I didn't know were hers.
She still visits.

I don’t carry her in grief so much anymore.
I carry her in light.
In acts of service.
In the love that didn’t say itself,
but wrapped around us anyway.

A labor of love—stitched quietly,
like everything else she gave.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Tracing Her Shadow

She still comes close.
The version of me I once had to be.
Sometimes she arrives quietly—
just a shadow
pulling up a seat beside me.

I’m evolving,
but I don’t know where I am in it.
And maybe that’s the point—
becoming isn’t a path you measure.
It’s a presence you feel.

Still—
she lingers.

Maybe she needs to know
that she mattered too.
Even if I’ve outgrown her.
Even if I only trace her now in silhouette.
She kept me alive.

But now,
I’m living.
I’m learning what it means to meet life
not with armor,
but with arms open.

Still, one hand
reaches back—
not to stay,
but to say thank you.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

After The Storms

After heat.
After rain.
After everything felt too much.

The sky doesn’t explain itself.
It just returns.
In color. In balance. In stillness.

Inhale... exhale. Be grounded.

Be still. And know 

that after everything—

the heat, the ache,

the storm you didn’t ask for—

you don’t have to do anything.

Beauty returns anyway.

Stillness returns anyway.

Just stand in it.

Just see it.

And let that be enough.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Monologue #6: The Song of My Ribcage

I laughed. 

And in that laughter—deep, sudden, from the belly of me—I found freedom. Not the kind we fight for. The kind that was always there, waiting behind the illusion I had clung to like armor.

It hit me not with a crash, but with a giggle:
I was never in control.
And what a ridiculous, beautiful, tragic little story I had told myself for so long—that control was safety. That control meant I was doing something right.

But no.
Control was the cage.
And the key was my own surrender.

When I let it go—the anger, the tightness, the need to manage everyone’s everything—what filled the silence wasn’t fear.
It was laughter.
It was breath.
It was... me.

All of me.

The very core. Every shade. Every mood. Every sacred contradiction. Finally free to move, to speak, to play without apology.

I don’t yet know what my hands will create with this freedom. It’s too new, too pure. But I know they will create. Because creation is what happens when we’re no longer holding the world up with our teeth.

I’ve lived enough to appreciate this kind of knowing. I’ve suffered enough to recognize it when it arrives:
the peaceful, euphoric surrender into divine order.

It is not passivity.
It is not giving up.

It is trust.

That the road will turn where it must.
That I will know what to do when it does.
That I am not alone.
And I never was.

It is no longer I and God—like co-pilots.
It is God... and I.
The divine leads. I follow, free.

And when I wake in the morning, no longer carrying the weight of everyone’s happiness, no longer mistaking control for love, there is light in my chest.

And in that light, a song.

It’s not sacred hymn or polished prayer.
It’s messy, playful, and probably off-key.
Something like:
“These are a few of my favorite things...”

And I sing it.
Because no one’s watching.
And even if they were, it wouldn’t matter.

My ribcage is a cathedral.
My breath is the offering.
And laughter is the hymn that set me free.

And I’m not crying anymore.

I used to cry easily—hurt too easily.
Each tear a protest against a world I couldn’t shape.
Each ache tied to the belief that I could—or should—control the people, the moments, the outcomes.

But now, with all that released, the tears have shifted.

They will still come, I know.
But not from soul-deep suffering, not from the wounds I carved by holding too tightly.
Let the tears come now when I see beauty.
When I am moved.
When life is so achingly pure, it spills over.

For now, there is a smile.
A real one.
Not a mask.
But a smile rooted in the quiet knowing:

It is what it is.
And that is enough.

No, it won’t be perfect.
But I will take it moment to moment.
And may I keep laughing—every day—like freedom itself is echoing back through my ribs.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai

Monologue #5: The Release

I have been angry.

Not the loud kind. Not the firebrand rage that splits walls and scorches bridges. No. Mine was quieter, but no less consuming—a silent storm, coiling in my spine, whispering distractions into every corner of my days.

For three days, I floated, disconnected. I posted things that didn’t match -I mixed songs and most of it just off skew.... I said I was fine when I was unraveling. I danced the old dance—pleaser, appeaser, silent tiptoer in a world that never noticed the bruises blooming on my self-worth.

And then, clarity.

It didn’t arrive with trumpets. It came in a hush, like the universe cracked a window in my ribcage and let the truth drift in.

I am not in control.

Not of others. Not of outcomes. Not of the tangled ballet that life choreographs without my permission. I had clutched tightly to the reins of illusion, thinking I could steer the chaos if I just smiled hard enough, bent far enough, stayed small enough.

But no.

That was a lie.

And like all lies, it demanded my peace in payment.

So I let go.

Not with fury—but with softness. I handed my anger to the wind. I offered my need for control to the sky. I buried the burden at the universe’s feet, whispered: “You carry this. I’m done.”

And I chose me.

Not selfishly. Not recklessly. Just... honestly. Fully. Finally.

I will no longer fold myself into the shapes others find comfortable. I am not here to prop up the happiness of those who cannot tend to their own gardens. Their peace is not my business. Their chaos is not my responsibility.

I am not their mirror, their balm, their savior.

I am mine.

And in this choosing, I have no apology to give. I do not shrink from the surprise in their eyes. Let them adjust. I am adjusting, too—to the wild power of being true to myself.

I am light.
I am love.
I am protected.
I am hollow—so that I may be filled.
So I may be a vessel of purpose

So that I may be aligned with what seeks to flow through me

And this morning, late in the waking, I rose with peace stitched into the lining of my breath.

It is what it is.

And I am enough for it.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai