:/

I'm always surprised at how I lose my words first.

Or at least how quickly and how badly I lose them if I'm not expecting it.

They go as soon as you stumble in with a smile into my stupidly narrow field of vision, and I try my best not to keep my face free of the irrational joy that I feel.

It's even more puzzling when the effects aren't there when I'm online. I guess it's because it's so much easier to hide behind my :/s, (: , :Ds and Ums. I won't worry about my lips trembling again, or that my voice will shake.

It's easy up here where I run circles around everyone with my digital dexterity. Not that running circles around you is what I'm looking for, just to keep a neurotic step (or two) ahead. Not that you're around to keep my lonely self company anyway.

But of course I find myself entrapped also, because for me it's not the number of words you say, but how you say them. I can write letters, books of fascinating and vapid commentary about the littlest of things, but when I get down to caring as much as I can, I struggle to go beyond an "are you okay?" "Really?" or even the pathetic "Oh...."

It's pathetic because I always find myself following it up with a woefully inadequate "that must suck" or "....suck". Maybe because I haven't yet found a combination of odd symbols to express true concern, or a light touch that i wouldn't dare to venture in real life, but really one that to me seems like the only viable course of action.

It's just another one of the many things I wish I would do, and tell myself I would do, but still find myself acquiescent yet again as you ramble on again. Because just being there is reward enough for me I guess, and something always violently bludgeons me on my head, telling me to shut up because your rambling will do a lot more for you than a thousand hugs from me.

Maybe it's right.

But in any case I listen, to you and you're gone with a flash. You'll be back next week of course, and in the meantime I'll plan religiously the words I want to say, but forget once more that speaking itself will be a challenge.

I suppose it could be more than I hoped for anyway. Being stuck like this forever.

Stripped

They came for the trees that day. That day when I realized that everything was going to change. I had known how you were slipping away from me, brusquely and alarmingly quickly, for far too long.

I told myself to let you. To let you go without trying hard, but only because I knew you would be back again to coyly slip me a smile that promised more but never delivered; and so I left easily. I shrugged aside the unexpected burst of sunlight in my face as I hurried on my way, ignoring the yellow hardhats bustling about busily.

But then the sunlight spread into my street. Not just along the neighborhood, but right into my street and so it was the next week I returned. And the next. The chickens and squirrels moved on while the birds cried in despair, as they overlooked from the few ancient branches that were left standing.

The fences went up yesterday. Construction fences.

*************************************************

I don't know how to say what I have to say. How those corrugated metal sheets that fenced the dead sand where the forest once stood took away my dreams. My idyllic dreams of lying about on that patch of land. That flat lump of ground often decorated by an overnight beer from someone else who found it charming. Or maybe simply because they had been working there.

No longer would I be able to camp there, or wander there in the middle of the night for an illicit tryst or adventure. No longer would the forest promise to house some mythical ghost or beast, or a colony of dissatisfied teens hiding in refuge from their parents and the world, strangely within 100m of a shopping center.

And I wouldn't run there in the middle of the night on a whim, and she wouldn't pick up my call and be there with me, not least because she didn't even live there anymore. She moved a while back. And it tires me to ask for her so anymore. Too much today. Too much.

It's over.

Time to build something new on that overgrown mess that is my heart.

Broken

It's not what's gone wrong per se, but what's simply not there.

So much so that he's not a worn-down car out of service, but a clock that never started going, the hands still stubbornly pointing to 12:00. He'll be right. Sometimes. Right in his own fucked up way yeah? Except he struggles along, stubbornly creeping away from what he was made to be.

It's better to be a clock that's five minutes off, but what about seven? You know, just far away enough to be unsettling, but not so far away that you can laugh and say, oh there's the problem. Far away enough that people will whisper strange things about him behind his back. About how he's slow, not in the conventional way, but he just might not get things. You know. Everyone does.

And people will notice, have noticed, that he's not right. He's never right. He won't be right until an asteroid or gravity field from the cosmos of space drag the earth seven minutes in the right direction. No, we wouldn't want that. That would be fucked up.

Luckily for us all, it's the unmade nature of his that allows him to catch up sometimes, but race past into the future. He'll tell us six o'clock, six o'clock! When it's only five. And sometimes, we all just want six o'clock to come, so that's good. It's his unmade nature that allows him to stop time and scream about it all.

For the lost. For the forgotten. For the clocks that were unmade and will be. For you.

He'll stop time when you fall. Struggle almightily to keep the blood from flowing, find a way to catch you before you crash burning into the ground. He'll stop time to memorialize, because that's whats important. The ripples that are left behind, the rushing currents of the frantic jetstream of life, that corkscrew and bring down the wounded blackbirds.

And  he'll sing a song for the blackbirds too, and for all the clocks that were unmade.

She's beautiful

Look at her, they say. She's beautiful, and you nod. There's no denying it really. So admired, so different, confident and so incomprehensible. 

What's it like to be something everyone looks at in approval? Someone whom boys queue up to please? She smiles at me sometimes and says, it's okay; you're nice, you'll find someone who's right for you. 

She says it and believes it, because what else does she know? Love comes easy to people like her, and how could she understand what it's like to not have someone there for her? Does she know what it's like to scroll down her list of friends and find that "67 online" means none available. For her. 

I don't think she knows what it means to be alone. Alone for her isn't finding blank doors wherever she turns, but simply a lot of weird doors, clustering around her and not knowing which one to walk through. She's not struggling to find anything, just a little confused as to which way to go. 

It's hard to understand what they get afraid of still. For each jealous backstabber you'll find a thousand grunts willing to take the blow for her. Everytime she cries out, a new crowd will be there, all clamoring for a piece of her beauty. 

It's even harder to say anything when they cry. Sure, he broke your heart, but there's another eighty-four handsome suitors waiting outside your door. Another hundred less eligible but ever-hopeful...replaceable beings. Like me. So someone will love you....again, you say.  Once more, but even better. 

And the next day you'll see them, all calm collected and picked up in their measured grace.Just how does she do it? They whisper all over again. And she smiles at you, beautifully as you don't quite know what to do as she meets your gaze. 

What's it like to be normal you ask her, carelessly, desperately. Wrong. She doesn't know it either.

A Little Piece of Yellow

You say that your favourite flower was the sunflower. When I laugh lightly and ask why, you say sadly with your eyes that it reminds you of your mother.

You were a troublesome kid. Or at least your father tells you so. Your relatives used to agree and tut in unison while your mother tried to make you sit straight as you squirmed uncomfortably on the chair, tugging at the pretty lace they put on you. They called you the mischievous one, you tell me, and I can't help but smile. You still are.

Childhood is a paradox for you. That particular shade of nostalgia surrounds it, because you know, it's childhood, yet it's dirty. Dirty with the sounds of beatings and shoutings; punishments of mirrors, lectures of fidelity and the like. You were happy, but it doesn't make you happy to know now. It's all tinged for you, with the hintings of the invisible, hidden motives and meanings, and hidden powers threatening to encroach on your life.

Hidden strings that you still have to try to bat away. It's a childhood that you still long for though, because it didn't slip away through the years. She died didn't she? The childhood you, somewhere amidst the death, the confusion, the tenderness and the lack of it. Maybe it was when everyone became a lot nicer out of sympathy, and never stopped. Maybe it was the way no one spoke a word of Chinese again. Maybe it was when your father, tried to pick himself up and uprooted the family to another land with another woman.

If that wasn't it, maybe it was where you lost your first kiss, to someone who didn't treasure it as much as you did. Or maybe it was when you realised you didn't care that much about it anyway. Maybe it was when you darkly gave yourself to someone who everyone blamed, and refused to believe that it was your fault at all. It was gone by the time you found yourself alone in your room, day after day, writing powerful missives of hurt to no one in particular. Mutilated when your father, always so strong, broke down and tried to find in you a confidante, because maybe to him, you reminded him of her too much. All before you were fifteen.

You call her stupid. The earlier you. It does puzzle me because when I see a father burst into the bathroom and find his little girl sitting there with a dull metal blade, it's not stupidity I see.

And that's the thing I guess you're looking for, that time far away where you were once, as your mother wrote in a diary you attacked voraciously, "not very bright". Before the flows of hurt came and swept everything away. And maybe, they still linger around. I've seen the flash of hurt in your eyes when nothing you do is ever enough. I see that same flash in the eyes of the girl who struggled to master her ABCs by the age of 1 while her mother threatened and administered beatings.

But you still miss her.

I guess in the same way, it's what I look back on too. You don't really understand, but maybe you will like this. I choose to look back to the time before everything was swept away, when there still is a you in the present. A time where you say, and not where you have said.

That's why my favourite flower is the sunflower, it reminds me of you.

CAP portfolio

The next few pieces were taken from a portfolio I submitted for the Ministry of Education organized Creative Arts Programme, along with a cover/description page I'll reproduce here

The 7th Day

Waiting For the Rain

Didn’t Make A Sound

All We Have Left

03:00

The following pieces were chosen for their completeness and their authenticity, and as I feel that they best represent my writing style.

The 7th Day is what some might call a love story; it’s based around a half-remembered Chinese belief that came to mind one day and tells the story of a grieving woman separated from her roots.

Waiting For the Rain is a tribute piece inspired by the story of local hero Lt Adnan Saidi, after I decided for once to do a little more than reminisce and think about his sacrifice.

Didn’t Make A Sound would be another piece set in Singapore’s past, and talks about a strange experience that a boy from the country had while struggling to acquaint himself with the strange new city he finds himself in.

All We Have Left is somewhat of a stub; set in a ruined dystopia it plays on a sense of isolation; admittedly partly inspired by a few horror/survival flicks that I’ve watched.

0:300 is a little experiment that I of mine, which I wrote it after recalling an old legend about the “twilight zone” and marrying it with my old irrational fear of falling asleep on the bus, getting lost and never ever getting back.

The 7th Day

It had been one week since I got the news. I still hadn’t gotten used to him being gone, and I wouldn’t for a long while. Every now and then I think of him, and it hurts. Just like that, our perfect little world fell to pieces, and there was nothing I could do about it. We had finally been able to afford a place of our own after years of slogging away deep into the night. It was supposed to be the start, the first step on the road to our dreams and our happily ever after.

Life is cruel sometimes.

It was an accident as they like to call it. A horrific one, 11 cars piled up in the middle of the freeway. 17 injured, 3 dead. I never read the newspaper reports, and I couldn’t step out of the house for three days, but I still remember the face of the police officer at the door, the icy fear that gripped my heart.

“Mrs Parker?” He said. “Sophie Parker?” He shifted hesitantly as I nodded, “I’m really sorry.…”

The way my world plunged into darkness.

But I had to move on. Or at least try to. I brought Ally out to our backyard to play that day, she was only four and I hadn’t and wouldn’t and just couldn’t tell her. Daddy was far away, I said. He wouldn't be coming back so soon — yes, he still loves you very much. She said she understood and gave me a brilliant smile and it took all of my strength not to tear up as I returned the smile.

September 10th, it was to be her fourth, and her first without him. The first of many, but she wouldn’t miss him that day I told myself. So I had her decked out in her favourite red dress and set her out with a shiny new set of sand tools in the backyard.  The autumn wind bit at our heels that day but she didn’t mind; and so I didn’t either.

It was a beautiful day; the leaves were golden and the slight haziness to the air just served to make the soon approaching sunset more picturesque. The wind picked up again, and the dead leaves stirred themselves once more, soaring through the air in a kaleidoscope of colour.

Just then a cloud went over the sun and something went wrong. The leaves fell to the floor, dead again, but the breeze kept blowing; no longer nourishing. No, it was a winter wind. Powerful and vengeful, seeking to claim and to take; the beauty of the autumn day spoiled and corrupted. A lone church bell tolled in the distance and I felt an icy panic grow within me. Ally didn’t notice. The bell sounded again, bringing back memories of a different time. Memories, from a place so far past it seemed like another life.

Chinese bells, funeral bells.

The thought shook me. Death was the last thing I wanted on my mind, but yet it was all around. The cold finality of it all. Suddenly it struck me how alone we were. The yard seemed impossibly large, and the fences around it unnecessarily high. Like prison walls they loomed, and yet the yard grew ever more expansive; expansive yet encircling. There was not a human to be heard. The bell tolled again and once again my mind flew back to the time before and I heard the voice of my long dead grandmother speaking.

”The Chinese say that on the seventh day, the soul of the dead will return….to make a final visit”

Visions, pictures flashed through my mind.

“If you spread talcum powder on the floor and see footprint traces the next day, then you will know your loved one has found their way home…”

Ah Girl tonight you must sleep with us and don’t touch the food on the altar. Tomorrow also don’t touch. Don’t go out of the room until we tell you to okay?

Wah wah come look, Ah Gong came back last night, and he took the oranges we left him…

A strange mood had settled about the place, and I struggled to deal with the inexplicable flood of pictures from my past. Suddenly I noticed the yard had grown deathly still. The loudest sound to be heard was my own breathing, followed by Ally’s erratic scraping of the sand.

Just then I heard a distinct crunch behind me. Not loud but distinct, like a footstep. On the edge, I spun around but found nothing there. Trying to calm myself down, I sat myself down next to Ally, and took in the structure she was building. A tower, or lighthouse; I couldn’t tell.

Crunch

I jerked myself to my feet and looked around in futility, taking in the sparse grass, and high wooden slats. The safety of the house a million miles away.

Crunch

"Ally."

She looked up.

"Go inside, it’s time for your dinner soon." I said, trying to keep my voice even, watching her as she slowly gathered up her toys.

"Just leave them dear, I'll get them for you."

She turned for a second and looked at me with her big brown eyes. Is everything alright Mommy? I gave her a reassuring smile, and her mind at ease, she ran the distance up the yard, slamming the screen door behind her as she scrambled up to her room.

Now it was just me. Me and the yard. I didn't know what I was looking for or what made me stay, but then the wind stopped just as the cloud moved away from the sun, pouring light down on me. It was then that he stepped behind me and drew me close, holding me against him with his hands around my waist.

"John.."

"Shh..." he whispered into my ear, "don't try to turn around."

I sighed as he stood there and breathed deeply, once again taking in his scent.

"They didn't lie to me did they John."

"No no," he said, sadness pervading his voice. "They didn't."

I cried in his arms and he held me tighter, comforting me with his soft words as I slowly made my way back from the hurt, the raw hurt.

"Sophie, I'm going to have to go now." He paused. "I'm sorry I couldn't take care of you like I said I would, I hope you'll forgive me."

I tried to speak but I choked as the words for the moment eluded me, emotion forming an insurmountable lump in my throat.

"Give Ally my love will you, I'll miss her."

I began to cry again, and he hugged me like he always used to once more, pressing something to my hand before letting go.

As soon as he released me I turned around but I was alone again, and he was gone forever. In my right hand was a white rose, whiter than the snow, pristine and perfect.

Waiting for the Rain

He crouched there, in the middle of the dense forest, in his little muddy foxhole. He listened to the crickets. It was early morning now, and dawn wouldn't be too far away. He clutched his rifle to him tightly, it was the only thing he could hold on to for now, his companions were a distance away, in their own holes in the earth. Watching, waiting for any warning signs.

They had left last night. The white folk. Run back to the city, unwilling to stay in the damp. We aren't going to die here they had said, not for nothing. He clenched his teeth at their cowardice, then slowly released his anger. Keep calm, he thought, it would do no one well to dull your senses with rage.

He listened out, for any footsteps, as he breathed slowly. He heard the rustle of the leaves, and felt the wind blowing softly on his skin. This was once a peaceful village. He had come here before, to enjoy the tranquility. To help his aunt and cousins wash their laundry, along the gentle jungle stream. Now the huts stood empty, the people gone, and the peace gone with them. But in this rare lull in the ceaseless bombing, he again found the forest quieting. The trees, unmoving and resolute.

The enemy had come like a raging hurricane, sweeping everything before them. Nothing had been able to hold them back. It was pointless to resist, he recalled the white folks words, as they scampered away. But he couldn't, this was where he had lived, it would be where he died if God so willed it. He thought of his children, they would be safe away from this place, he would miss them. It was Valentine's day today, he realized, and he hadn't had a chance to wish Sophia so, since she had left ever so reluctantly with the kids, her headscarf blowing in the wind, her silhouette, still framed in his mind.

He knew then, that he would never see her again, and it pained him to think of her grieving. But she would have to be strong. He knew that she was, it was why he loved her so. Just as she had to be strong, so did he. His men were counting on him to lead him, and he could not, would not fail them. Let them come, he thought. We will be ready. Nearby he heard a rooster crow, and he watched the forlorn sun creep its way over the horizon. He looked upon it anew, with a sense of wonder and fear.

A shout came from his comrades, ringing out and shattering the silence, and they ducked low as the shells began falling upon them, tearing up the soil and shaking the once immovable trees like thunder. He spotted a flash of khaki coming up the ridge, took aim and fired. The man fell, and never got up again. This was it, there was no turning back now. He stood tall and gave the rallying cry.

Biar putih tulang, jangan putih mata

Death before Dishonour.

Didn't Make a Sound

My heart is stuck.

Let's go back to the years before.

**************************************************

Back then we had to earn our keep. I was only seventeen, and at the time, it wasn't too old an age to work. An education had to be earned, and earn it I did. My mother found me some employment in the city, a twenty minutes’ walk from my old village in the countryside; near enough, yet it was a different world from the one I grew up in.

In the village we had five households, sixty-three people, and their names I could recite for you even today, though the place where it used to stand is graced by a road intersection and the forlorn privilege of perching myself on that very spot and looking around in nostalgic silence has long been taken from me.

You have to understand what it must have been like: a lanky wide-eyed country boy standing in the noisy rice shop as about fifty sweaty men bustled about with their rice sacks, struggling to listen to the instructions being shouted at me in Hokkien by the towkay. He shouted because there was no other way to be heard, not that I could hear him anyway, one moment I was peering into the dim mass of frenetically moving people, next thing I knew, a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it was thrust into my hand and I was shown the exit with a rice bag over my shoulder.

And so I set off on my journey across the cramped and foreign land. The city wasn't too big, but the roads certainly took some getting used to. The way people clustered themselves along the narrow walkways that lined the open streets, not walking straight down the middle like they always did in the countryside. No, the road was for the rich. The rich and their rickshaws and trishaws and the expensive Ford vehicles. The noise too, was something that kept at me, kept reminding me of the strangeness of the land.

I followed the directions the towkay had shouted at me with great difficulty, but after asking multiple strangers and flashing the address at them, I found myself in a cramped damp alley. For the first time in the town I heard silence; the occasional car engine echoed into that narrow space from what seemed an eternity away, and all was quiet save the dripping of water from the rooftops, forming themselves into shallow stagnant pools all around.

I made my way slowly down the alley, all too aware of the splashes my feet made in the puddles, doing my best to skip over them whenever I could, ignoring the load on my back. I was younger and stronger then you see. I came to a rusty plate in the wall. Number 17. The door next to it that served as the entrance into the building was broken, hanging off it's hinge, and I stepped in softly.

Everything on the inside was old too. The cobwebs were there in the corners if you looked, the sheets of calligraphy that hung on the walls, hinting at long gone opulence, were yellowed and stained. I was to go up to the second floor, and the wooden rotten stairs made no noise as I climbed upwards.

The door to the apartment, or room, or flat at 2B was red. At least it had been red once, now it was red, speckled with black, brown, white and brown where all the wood had come off in strips. I rapped on the door and I called out, the knock sounding unusually loud in the confined landing between the stairs and the door and it swung open almost immediately, as if I had been expected all along. Not simply expected, because I surely was, but as if I had been waited for.

The old man muttered as he let me in, pushing over pieces of junk on the floor to make way for me as I entered the room, I suppose he was scolding me for being late but I had been too busy staring at the glowing box in the corner of the dark room. That was the first time I had ever seen a television, the miracle picture machine and it's strange filtered way of delivering sounds. Distorted. Foreign.

"Ah Kim ah!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs, startling me. City folk are strange people. Nowadays they, you all I mean, speak so fast. Back then, they would shout for nothing. The living room was cramped, almost claustrophobic, and he had a need to shout. But yes, for the first time I noticed the old woman who lay in a massive foreign chair facing the tv. Her eyes closed. She did not stir.

"The rice is finally here, we can eat soon." He brayed, ignorant to the fact that Ah Kim didn't quite seem to care. Or move actually. A chill started at the tip of my fingers.

He grabbed the rice bag from me, his sinewy limbs deceptively strong and clattered his way across the room. He stood by the chair and regarded her. "Ah Kim ah, are you cooking today?"

"No?"

He paused as I stood there in silence. I wondered if I should say something. But didn't.

The old man bustled off into the kitchen, swinging in the rice sack as he did. "Hang on, I'll get the money. You stay right there." A moment later, I heard a great crashing sound of pots and cymbals. "Just hang in a bit" he shouted.

I leaned over as the ringing faded into emptiness again. The old woman was still lying there, completely motionless. She wasn't breathing, and her leathery speckled skin was cold to the touch.

A sudden fanfare from the television startled me, and I jumped back as a man in a suit appeared on the screen to synthesized applause and the old man creaked back into the room, shuffling notes in his hand and peering at them with thick squarish glasses. The type that you see nowadays occasionally, in joke shops.

He looked up after counting the money and caught me staring at her. Rolling his eyes he said, "I know she's a little weird at times, excuse her." Flashing a look towards the chair he raised his voice again. "Ah Kim ah, this is the last time I'm cooking this week. I swear."

"She's been sitting there for days, lazy pig. Kim ah, please send our visitor off."

I backed out of that strange place with the money, leaving him behind by himself, only letting myself shed a tear once I was out of the building, out of the alley where he wouldn't possibly hear me, or any corruption that I would have said and brought. That affection in his voice you see, was and is to this day the plainest purest love I've ever heard.

All We Have Left

He coughed hard as he stumbled in the desert sun, brushing the mini sand storm brewing at his feet out of his eyes, shielding them at the same time from the blasting heat. Blasted heat, he corrected himself. He looked over to his left to see how she was doing, as usual, she was striding just a little ahead with no problem. He had no idea how she did it.

They had been at it for days. Days of trekking, looking to find a piece of civilization in the wasteland. The prospect of solitude was always daunting, but he took solace in the fact that he wasn't alone. There had still been people in the city, but at the thought of the city he felt a chill despite the scorching fireball above him.

A bird cry broke the sound of their rhythmic and his not so rhythmic trudging and snapping out of his reverie he brought his rifle to bear, scanning the horizon for danger but there was nothing. No people, no buildings, trees, or signs of life save the unidentifiable bird in the distance.

"Relax Joe, there's nothing around, I doubt it spread this far." She said casually, returning her own pistol to her holster as she did.

He grunted in reply. It didn't matter, it paid to be careful, but she knew that, and he knew that when danger came she was always the more cautious one. He cleared the sand out of his gun before slinging it back over his back and following after her. The pistol was probably a better option or even no gun at all, the sand got everywhere in the desert it did. It got into eyelids, nostrils, phones, bags and guns. His clothes had sand on them, in them, and when he licked his lips he could taste sand. Everywhere he looked he saw sand. He was sick to death of it, but there was nothing to be done about it. He spat a mouthful of sand out onto the sizzling floor and felt for his knife on his belt, a little something that wouldn't stop working cause of sand.

As the noon sun changed to evening sun, and the sky took on the softer hues of purple and orange, he spotted something in the distance.

"You see that Sheila? We aren't supposed to hit anything for another week."

She struggled with her map as another gust of sand-filled wind started up.

"We might've gone off course, let's head for it anyway."

She was at it again, making decisions for him, but he let her. It didn't matter as long as she didn't do anything stupid. But she wouldn't. So he followed as they neared the structure.

It was an old building, an imposing stone structure, the type that hadn't been built for a few centuries now. As they poked about it in sunset light the ground beneath their feet crumbled and they landed harmlessly in a pile of sand. Sloppy. His mind whispered, you're gonna get yourself killed if you keep this up.

He leapt to his feet as soon as he could and swept his flashlight across the dark. There was nothing. He looked behind and met her gaze, they both nodded silently. All clear.

Ruins, in the middle of the desert. He mused to himself as walked through the cavernous hallway slowly, rifle at the ready. Yes this building must have been a few centuries old at least. Before the meltdown, before everything changed.

"Sat nav shows that we didn't go off course, the maps say there's nothing here." She remarked, the blue glow of that confangled Apple construct reflecting off her face.

"There's more to this world than the maps, how far back does it go? I'd say this place has been gone for more than a century."

It was her turn to fall silent as she mused about the fall of technology. They had been forced to revert to the antique firearms since the meltdown, almost everything had stopped working in the same way. And so they had lived with it, and had done their best to cope. It wasn't as if things a hundred years back were primitive, just inferior.