To you if you’re THERE,
I hope you’re doing well on our “home” planet. I’m writing to you from the space between galaxies, making my way around moon-hopping, leaving a bit of me everywhere I go. Which means I’m leaving a tiny bit of you everywhere I go, too.
The stars, which you told me weren’t real, are very real. As real as I am, if I’m even real.
And they never get closer, no matter how far you travel, which is their whole thing. A star up close is a sun. It’s only when it’s far away that it’s a star. What makes a star, then, is the distance. What makes a star is how much it makes you want to reach.
Life out HERE isn’t so cold as everyone back THERE said it would be. And even if it were, what a small sacrifice. But everybody I encounter HERE asks me, “Why would you leave THERE to be HERE—to be nowhere?” THERE isn’t as perfect as they think. But even if it were, what a huge sacrifice it would have been to stay. Horrible things can happen, even in the most beautiful of places.
I hated it THERE. Or, I didn’t hate it, but I hated what it was made into. Or, I do hate it THERE, but I love what it was before I knew it. Or what it can be after I’m gone. Now that I’m gone.
But still, when everyone asks about me, I can’t talk about myself without talking about THERE. And I can’t talk about THERE without talking about all of you. And I can’t talk about any of it without talking about the act of leaving, and the act of coming home. Even if I never do.
I’m always/never leaving, and I’m always/never coming home. I was never THERE, or maybe I always have been and still am. I couldn’t be THERE without thinking about HERE, and I can’t be HERE without thinking about THERE. That’s just how a diaspora is.
I know you all created THERE for me, for us. And I really appreciated it, honestly. But sometimes someone loves you how they think you should be loved, and they create a world for you that’s for who they think you should be, and what can you do? It’s the only world you’ve ever known, the only real thing. And isn’t any world better than none?
No. Sorry, but it isn’t.
Have you ever felt yourself phasing out of existence back THERE? Like if you unfocus, or focus in, enough, you’ll start to feel just how fragile the gravity is THERE. And you’ll take off to those false, very real stars.
I used to be afraid of feeling that. I’d try to drag myself back under the weight of THERE, and it was always so heavy, but I told myself that no one can change that, no matter what they do. I constantly felt the inertia rushing my organs forward as they raced to not fall behind the orbit. They’d hit up against the wall of my body, get all scrambled, and I could never remember where they were meant to be. And I thought I had to brave it. I thought that was the point.
Imagine my surprise when I let myself be light. How my shoulders rose. How my arms lifted. How my legs swung. How my chest flattened. How I flew.
For a while, I’ll admit, I struggled with being worldless. And you tried to pull me back THERE, and a part of me wanted you to. I wished I could belong. And you must have known. I loved you all so much. For most of my life, I gave everything of me away just to love you and be with you. I was good; I was golden; I was calm; I was quiet; I was tolerant; I was patient; I was gracious; I was small; I was regretful; I was shameful; I was protective; I was devout. I looked away from the stars. And sometimes, I thought I could live like that for you.
But I’d never stop believing in the stars. So I could never belong.
I tried out lots of different planets. Turns out, none of them were a good fit. I thought I must be the problem. If all these planets have all these people and they’re all so happy to be where they are, why can’t I be like that? Why do I refuse to belong? Why do I refuse to be happy? And then I’d shrink myself again, the way I did back THERE, hoping it would work this time around. But it never did.
Then one dawning, as I was leaving a planet and searching for another world to land on, feeling so remote and isolated I might as well have been wandering through a cosmic void, I decided to stop. To just float. To just be. To really look at the stars—the things I’d come out HERE in pursuit of in the first place. How did I forget that? How did I forget that what I wanted most was to be amongst the stars?
And so I realized I could make a home outside an existing planet—that we can build a world wherever we are, wherever feels right. That space dust is always gathering, and planets are always falling apart, the universe is always expanding until the cosmos decide to just implode, and that’s the natural flow, the way life moves, and who are we to deny that? After all, we didn’t even end up THERE until our previous planet had been destroyed by a war THERE started. And yet we cling to the worlds we exist in, succumb to their conventions and atmospheres and gravities, as if they’re all we have. They’re not. We’re our own world-builders, because if we don’t build the worlds we want, others will. We’re our own worlds entirely. And we’re our own diasporas.
That’s how HERE started. And I’ve since moved HERE around, and many have joined me, and many have left, and it will go on as such until HERE no longer exists. But I’m HERE now. And even when HERE isn’t HERE, it was once, and I was once, too.
Sometimes I really wish you could see it HERE. I wish you’d let yourself. Maybe you’d love it, too. But I know you’ll never leave THERE. There was a moment, once, where I watched you look up—like you saw the stars—and try to fly. You hopped up and you hovered there, for just a moment, and I thought you could do it. But you dropped back down, and never tried again. I get it. Some of us are meant to leave, and some of us are meant to stay. Some of us choose to remain comfortable—whether by leaving or staying. The choice is hard to make—harder to explain. But even if you never change, I want you to know that the discomfort is worth it. That I made it out, and I’m more than okay. That I’ve never felt so free.
You know, I say I hate it THERE—but the truth is, half of everything I love HERE is a thing that reminds me of THERE. The way every moon’s smile glides across the endless night sky. The way the space raven’s call sounds different in every region of the universe. The way lovers everywhere, no matter what solar system they’re from, are always carving their initials into plant corpses. The way land always offers you a staircase, and you have no choice but to take it. The way every galaxy’s gods reach down their hands, and I swear I can feel the rivets of their fingertips brush across my face.
And the other half of things I love is everything that is nothing like THERE.
Like how easy it is for me to exist HERE, to belong. Can you believe that? Would you believe how easily I’m cared for? Out HERE, the meteors love me; the asteroid belts love me; the nebulae love me; the supernovae love me; the black holes love me; the planets and their rings and moons love me. They love because love is what we’re all built of, all we have, and there’s so much of it to give, and we’re only as good as how we love. And out HERE, we’re always changing—just to love better.
It’s weird to write to you now. Even when we were THERE together, I spent years trying to write my way to you. In that way, you’re also like a star. And I sit with your absence by bringing you back into being with me HERE.
Diaspora is as much a practice of preserving as it is a practice of losing. But it’s always a reaching—toward memory and history, and also, toward a great and unmade unknown. I understand now: there’s no such thing as coming back home. There’s no return or resurrection. There’s no forcing belonging. Back THERE is your diaspora. And it’s a good one. But then HERE is mine. Home is always moving, and diaspora is always being created. A diaspora cannot be held, cannot be contained. It cannot be retold or repeated. It has become a different diaspora all too quickly. You hardly know it was there.
But for a moment, it was there.
For a moment, I was THERE.
If you need to find me now, I’ll be HERE. Where there’s always space for everyone else who wants to be HERE. Including you.
Where we can always begin again. And again. And again. And again.
With the stars,
from HERE
Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin (they/them) is a queer and trans, biracial, Vietnamese unamerican diaspora writer based in Boston, MA. Their work revolves around the intersection of dreaming/fantasizing/futurizing and grieving, and focuses on topics of care, diaspora, transness, ecology, empire, and intergenerational histories. The Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Xenolithic Edges Literary, Kyla-Yến’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions, and appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, ANMLY, Autostraddle, and other publications. They are a Press Editor for Half Mystic Press and a Co-Coordinator for Sundress Publications’ Poets in Pajamas reading series, and have taught writing workshops independently as well as for Split This Rock, Mendocino Art Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), and more. Their work has been supported by Tin House, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Kenyon Review, and more. You can visit Kyla-Yến’s author page at www.kylayenhuynhgiffin.com, and find them on Instagram @yenshrine.
