the face of the loved one is a composite of all the faces before

In 2020, I encountered an article chronicling the story of two Hong Kong expats, Richard and David, who were trying to adopt as a couple in a locality where queer folks rarely get approved to do so. In 2024, I adapted the article into a book-length poem that inhabits the voice of Richard and David’s non-existent child. “the face of the loved one…” synthesizes both experiences in 2020 and 2024 by layering a new medium, film, onto the continued afterlife of the article. The film, a meta-documentary of sorts, records my process of reading, remixing, and translating a queer narrative.