Jesse Chen
Bio
Lifelong poet, writer, singer, student of philosophy. Existentialist. Graduate student of Counseling Psychology.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jchen_love/
Stories (9)
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First
1. Before we became known
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Poets
Sleepless Nights
Right in the thick of the ballade, I forgot what came next and my fingers fumbled into a wild disaster of discordant notes. The left arpeggio clashed with the chords on the right. I paused. I lifted my hands and tried to revisit the measure, but I crashed into the same problem. I paused again, pretending to extend out a rubato from the last note played. Which major am I on? My eyes flared in the mad query for answers. Okay, the E flat chord goes here… but what’s the next arpeggio? How does the rest of the melody fall into place? The left-hand F goes with the right-hand G… no, E flat, right? I definitely knew how the next part should sound, I played it a million times. Yet, I didn’t have the time to be making crucial guesses. My mind ran a blank, as if a vacuum sucked out the painstaking years of practice into the trash.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Fiction
Last in Line
There was a distant line of onlookers, huddling close with their hands tied behind their backs against the brick wall. They were not sorry for how heretical they may have felt, in how they opposed religiosity and the terrible tragedies that they've come to find revolting by association. Not a shred of regret came over their faces beneath the dark plank ceiling. They knew what had to be done. There was no going back now.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Fiction
Eternity
I died. Standing in the giant rotunda, my name flashes around the entire terrace in bright gold letters like an electronic timetable. Personal details, risqué details of my death, the motive, the backdrop, the time and date: they’re all recorded in gold, circling high above as some laughable merry-go-round fair, reminding everyone present of how treacherous I really am. I don’t like their stares, their glowing, hot, beady red eyes straight on me. It makes me feel dead-on-the-spot, petrified, victimized as the center of attention, even in this place after death. Yet, there’s no other alternative, no “outs” in my book anymore, no escape plan that I can fall back on. This is it. All I can do is pray—well, maybe that’s too comical of a gesture. I wouldn’t even know who I would be praying to. Absolutely not to these blokes in the slightest, whatever they are.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Fiction
Success
Riddle out the breadcrumbs, off they go. These are the morsels that have fallen off into the grinding, shuffling like atoms, submerged at the feet of tables, locking time for stones. And all kinds, stones of multiplicity, gems or phones composed of the same nature, all appliances for maximally bound vehicles and the boldest properties.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Poets
Faith, Love and Betrayal
There are a few stories within any given life that merits full disclosure. This, I believe for me, is one of them, and all of what I’m about to tell you is unabashedly true. But, to be sure, I wouldn’t expect anyone to follow in my footsteps. Each of us is to be led by the beating purpose of our lives. The following story is mine, and by choosing to be a part of it, I’ve steadily grown to be further understood and exemplified by it. Now, I’ve fully embraced it because it has become a part of who I am, and I’d do nothing else to change it if I realistically could. For what I’ve come to personally know, embodying an authenticity requires digging deep and being gripped in a kind of death, before knowing how to rise from the ashes and live.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Confessions
The Mistress
She lowers herself upon the carpet, kicking away her heels against the tempting shadows. The mistress told herself all too many times that she was done begging for comfort, but such promises are emptied of their power against the pale weight of loneliness and the dead of night. Her single days have morphed into weeks of a crusted passion. Every other night, she welcomed the darkness that slowly came to find her body stony and imprisoned upon the floor, wishing always to be consoled. The consolation, however, only lasts as long as her face is able to sustain the flush of warmth. Yet, she continued inviting the feeling to come around again, to reel it in and bring it as close as it should be. Tonight is another attempt to coax that feeling, from whatever remains left of her.
By Jesse Chen4 years ago in Fiction
