the junes before you

Once in a while I share my diary entries from months or even years ago. I'm always amazed at how I could physically write so much in the past, how I even chose the traditional method of writing in a notebook when there's so many other ways to convey my emotions.

05/06/14

Honestly I've never realised we've already hit June. Feels like I'd completely lost track of time. I've lost track of how I'm growing up, of how often I'd fallen in love.

My precious diary, I'm crazy. You knew all along but you never told me. I'm...

I can't say it...

I am my own asylum. In me, there are mental patients, each with her own need, each with her own desires, selfish desires. A part of me denies my insanity, a part of me wants out, is screaming to be free, rattling the bars she's locked behind. Another cries all day, uncontrollable sobbing each time she looks out the window. Another, the loudest of them all apparently, or for now maybe, laughs at the slightest things.

A part of me wants to be loved.
Another wants to die.

Why does he make me seem like the villain? He was the one who left me because "I just don't love you anymore". He was the one who stopped trying, sat back and relaxed while I did all the hard work for us. The times he'd had to comfort me; it was simply because I'd crumbled from the exhaustion of doing my best.

Sure, I'd made some fatal mistakes here and there, but I've never been short of true with him. I felt neglected, I said so. Lonely, I said so. Angry, showed it. Appreciated him, said it.

...I don't even know why I came to reminisce.

Point is,... Don't bother doing your best, don't give anyone your all, because it'd all end up in flames, up in smoke in their hands. I don't know why I had to go through all the bullshits in life TWICE before I learn my lesson. Just like stupid engineering Maths.

20/06/15

So far, so good. I've got my strength back, my appetite - the only thing I haven't gotten back is all that money spent on medical bills. I don't think I'll get it back anytime soon though, because we still have some remaining fees to settle, seeing as I'd stayed a day and a half longer than intended.

It's horrifying, my bank account balance. I haven't had less than 100 for a really long time, let alone 30... Yes. I have a grand total of 20 in my bank account, thanks to the 3 days in hospital.

At the same time I wish the whole episode hadn't happened, I'm glad it did because it's brought my other half and I closer. I really appreciated him being there the entire time, even though I hadn't felt like talking much. Or doing anything for that matter.

When we met last Friday for Jurassic World, he'd told me he was feeling the guilt. Perhaps even more so than me, but either way I am trying to put up a good show, trying to look okay for his sake. I'd let him be upset about it, even if it means sacrificing the truth of my own feelings. He hates it when I lie to him, but it's for his sake.

I cannot stop thinking of 3 things right now.
1. Having to give out flyers later
2. Money
3. Her.

These 3 things have been bothering the shit out of me. At least a few weeks now, with the exception of #1. I hate how nobody understands the word FEAR. My manager's more than about FORCING me to do it. Can't sue me if I come back crying and about suicidal.

But whatever. My ego is definitely eons stronger than my fear. I'll do it even with tears in my eyes and quivering lips.

I keep daydreaming about the day I earn back all the money gone. From here on out, I need to have a minimum of $1000 in my bank account at all times. I'm glad it's Ramadan, because I'd get to skip a few meals without upsetting anyone.

Perhaps I moved back to Paya Lebar solely for this. I'd save transport fees if I do go home there instead of Pasir Ris. It's really selfish of me, but I really need to think twice before spending a single cent now. Bus fares included. And we still haven't settled the hospital bills, and my phone bills have accumulated to $200. Oh god I need all the money I could save/earn right now.

Lastly but definitely not the least: her.
I miss her to bits.
She was definitely in bits, the day I pushed her out. Hours later, when I'd left for surgery, ***** said he'd seen not only loads of blood on my hospital bed, but also bits of meat.

I am 100% more cruel than the wind. May she forgive us.

18/06/16

Wouldn't it be nice to earn money on the side while working a full-time job? My passion since forever is to write. I have been writing my whole life but it's been for nothing since I don't get anything out of it. It's just not fair.

What I would do to get a few dollars out of every blog post or book review I write. It is the best thing because I don't need to face customers for it. I don't need to have looks for it. Just read my books, say what I thought about them, and I'll have money. Wouldn't it be nice...

In the meantime, I can't stop thinking of the possibility of other jobs. I'm not happy in ******* anymore, because I just hate being unappreciated. Maybe it's partly why I don't have the balls to do what I truly want, I'm so afraid of being disappointed.

What's a girl to do? Everything requires looks. I loved writing, making videos but they're for nothing if I'm not pretty. It's why I've resorted to thinking of other jobs, of 'real' jobs. Receptionists, office jobs, a factory worker. I don't know what to do.

I want to have fifty thousand dollars in my bank so fucking bad. And I can't do anything to get that.

16/06/17

Falling, but there's nobody to catch you. Maybe the ones who are there below you with their hands out for you aren't the ones you were expecting. While you fell for a hurricane, you didn't notice the rose growing at your feet. After four years you finally see it, but maybe it's just a little too late. It's been taken by the wind.

But somehow it doesn't faze me. To be brought out of my shell and then shoved over the edge without that protective layer; I've done so too many times before and it feels like nothing. Maybe the heart is a little chipped yet again and now it's back to being me against the world, after thinking it'd been a flame and a flower against all else. I am broken, but I'm golden.

I am more than determined to finish my book, be it the poetry compilation or the diary entries from 2015 and beyond. And while my tendency to be a daydreamer is my biggest weakness sometimes, it may be the one thing right now that is pushing me to this lifelong desire. My head in the clouds, but a need to go higher.

The rose is right when he says I could go on all day with my metaphors. However dumb they may get, and however hard they clash with his theories, they make me who I am. They are my fractions that make me whole, the things that I love and the words I say and the memories I remember, the heartbreaks and the euphoria and the laughter and tears.

I know how weird and cruel god could get. When I hated life so much, I tried to get rid of myself but of course perhaps it hadn't been my fate yet. Maybe when my days are finally brighter and I've finally got myself together will He try to take my life away for good.

At least, despite his yet another sudden leaving, I have made it clear enough to him that if I wake up to die today, or tomorrow, I would have died loving this world because he's in it.

It has been a blissful sixteen days this June, and the past 4 years with him has been the best, despite my having been with someone else the entire time, floating through time and space and everywhere except anchored to him.

smaller lives

I've always known I adore trains, but I've never understood why. Sometimes in the middle of admiring them, this feeling starts weighing on me. The uncertainty, the questioning, wait what's so amazing about these carriages, why did god make me like this?

Two years ago I met someone who had a theory. That I love trains for the way they stay on track, unlike me with the plans that fall flat and unfulfilled dreams. That the admiring of railway came from the obsession with having things gone my way. A theory, but still something more than my blaming on our creator. 

But what about the desire to cuddle a cat-sized caterpillar? What of the stray beetle or moth that flies into the house and my first instinct is to say hello? What about the rainy days when I watch my step only for snails and not to ensure my own safe, dry path?

When did insects start appearing on me more often? The moth crawling for its life on the train floor. The butterfly that kept crashing into a glass window at the hotel I stayed at with my cousin. The caterpillar whose green colour made it almost luminescent, like it's glowing in the dark.

Sometimes a moth on my t-shirt, sometimes a caterpillar hanging from my hair. A bee stopping on my finger to say hello as I waited outside Masjid Wak Tanjong. Even a praying mantis, somehow ending up on our ninth floor flat. 

I have few positive memories of my father that have made me who I am today. I know he raised my older brother and I on his loud voice and kicks, but he was the one who taught me to treasure spiders. That a spider helped our prophet into hiding, something like that. He wasn't a very good teacher or story-teller.

He was the one who protested when my mother and I started smacking our hands on ants in the kitchen. Jangan bunuh lah, kesian, and he would mindlessly blow around the counter until he walked away, satisfied. Oblivious to the ants' immediate return.

On rainy days from a family gathering, or dinner at a random restaurant, he was the one who told us to look out for snails. I've always watched him pick one up from the middle of the path and plop it at the side, so it wouldn't be stepped on by other people. 

My mother would always groan in disgust, and she would always ask him, How would you know that's where the snail wants to go?

As time went on I tried to make this into my habit. I didn't want to accept something so good being my father's. I didn't want an affection for snails and insects to be inherited from someone whose abuse is the only thing my older brother and I have in common.

There is a memory of me at 20, walking in the drizzle with my colleagues. A mound of brown by the entrance to the mall, accompanied by other tiny mounds. I stop, fearing them squashed on by the unsuspecting, or the nonchalant. 

But even with my colleagues encouraging me, I couldn't do it. I had a paranoia of pulling too hard and plucking their shells right off their backs. And as much as I loved the little creatures, I didn't know anything about them. I didn't know what would hurt them.

The year I was turning 23, walking home with a boy training to be a steward. We met a huge snail, slowly gliding smack-dab in the middle of the pathway. It was half a cycling path, and I just could not leave it to a messy fate. But of course my inability to pluck and plop it to the side was a problem.

Solution? I stood there, shielding it from humans. I stayed rooted for more than half an hour, ignoring the annoyed looks from cyclists when the snail and I start entering their side of the path. The boy I was with didn't protest much and just waited patiently, one of the things I appreciated about him.

My father made it look so easy, but I just couldn't do the same. In that one way he was better than me, saving the lives of countless snails.

I didn't have to be raised vegetarian to treasure the smaller lives. I just had to be raised the way I am, feeling so insignificant and minuscule. Maybe it is the way I am treated like an insect that makes me emphasise with them. We are small, but I know we're worth so much more. It's just sad I had to learn this from a figure who treats ants like treasures, and a daughter like a bug.

playing victim

I know empty pages will always be there for me. Even if the words that I spill out onto them are invitations for misinterpretation and misunderstandings. Sometimes a simple diary entry is enough to prove abuse or an assault.

The three older people in my family will never understand my words, because their English is not good. This is the truth, but if they ever hear me say this they will get defensive and accusations of me calling them stupid will rise. It might even end with a broken plate, or a thrown chair, or a bruised face.

Perhaps that is where our miscommunication lie. I have the ability to twist the words in this language around, making them either powerful or ugly with truth while they can barely form full sentences. While they can barely understand me without tripping over themselves.

I am not ashamed of sharing the truth, which is why I have written a lot about them in here over the years. They are only triggered because their tendons are exposed. God, the one they don't pray to, forbid that anyone sees the dysfunctional family that they are.

My dad is right, I have been giving an attitude. If that is what he calls standing up for myself or taking the knives pointed at me to fight back, he is right. Only because I have never wanted anything as much as I want to get married. Not even the dreams of being a writer since I was seven.

So I have been fighting for a new life with someone who treats me well. When I was a child, simply commenting a dog was cute warranted a scolding from my parents. You can't say that, it's wrong because dogs are wrong! Just as well, it would be a ticket to hell saying someone else treats me better than my parents. You can't say that, it is wrong to speak ill of the people who gave birth to you! Even if they have abused you your whole life!

Here I am at twenty-five, finally speaking up for what I want: a wedding with the person who doesn't lay a finger on me. It is ironic that I have to seek permission from the very man who has beaten and kicked me since my childhood. Apparently because this is my test from God, of course this man and his wife are the ones who make it impossible. Him with his ego and her with her moneyface. My partner has his own tests, of course, but those are his stories to tell.

I've known for a long time that speaking to my parents is difficult. Not because of miscommunication yet, but because they immediately lash out when I'm just enquiring. What do you want a fifteen thousand dowry for? Because you are the only girl Eindah, and I am your mother! Why do you want it to be at a CC when we found a nicer and cheaper place? No I don't care, I say CC means CC!!!

With a snap of my finger I turn these simple enquiries into straight demands. No, I am doing it on this day and this place, no, I will not postpone it, no, I don't see you taking this seriously. And I know I have shocked poor old daddy by not taking his shit anymore, so predictably he retaliates. Don't you dare say I am not taking it seriously, don't accuse me of not doing anything when it's your fault for wanting to get married on short notice!

(It wasn't short notice. I had brought up the topic since mid last year and they both brushed me off because it was too soon and because my grandfather just passed away and we are all supposed to be in mourning.)

That came from the same person who was smiling to my future parents-in-law just a few days before. Giving beauty pageant worthy answers, encouraging us to marry soonest to escape accusations. No, I could not tolerate his deception and the taking back of his words, so I fought. And that is what he has called 'lawan', in the sobbing rants to my paternal grandmother.

These little conversations are what led from one thing to another. While my mother was planning the meals for the unnecessary merisik she insisted on, my father was reading the news of the first local Covid-19 deaths and told her to cancel. Rarely do my mother and I agree, but we both decided to ignore him and went on with it. He reacted by running away, and although I'm still unsure whether he did go to work, I give him the benefit of the doubt.

I believe that is the point the cold shoulder started. Ignoring me, refusing to be in the same space or dining table as me. My younger brother and I on our sahur, and he blatantly addresses only him with reminders that time is almost up. Even after I overheard him complaining that his backpack had torn and I'd secretly bought him a new one online. A forced thanks over text, and back to the cold shoulder.

Being forced to be home for two months is a fight for my life. Little things make me fear for myself, from the lightbulb buzzing that eventually merges into my head to the screaming of children outside my bedroom door. Little things like half empty cartons of milk and abandoned chocolate bars in the refrigerator. I did not need immaturity from a fifty six year old couple to add to the mix.

So I run away to the second roof over my head, somewhere in Mountbatten. In the past it was always a comfort, six cats and dreamless sleep. What more could I ask for? A question that turns into doubt and suspicions of just me being ungrateful.

I never had a problem with the hoarding, but of course the junk piling up is symbol of the little things accumulating inside me. A room where the only free space is the T shape on the floor that my grandmother and I sleep in. The lack of a mat to dry our feet outside the toilet door because the cats will pee on it, making dirt stick to the soles of my feet wherever I walk.

Waking up at four in the morning to sahur, and hearing scutter sounds when you turn on the kitchen light. The sight of huge roaches scurrying back to their hiding places behind containers of milo and bottles of soya sauce. By the time I wake my grandmother up out of fear, none of the pests are in sight, and she comes the conclusion that they're gone and won't come back. A cockroach lays 40 more eggs every time she says this sentence.

It has messed me up to the point where I could not remove a tube of toothpaste from its box without fearing there is something hiding inside. Where I could not sleep from the thought that a roach is crawling towards me, hiding among the junk all around me. Well, why don't you just clean? I admit I'm too unstable to clear these mountains without fear and paranoia clutching me with everything I touch.

The two people living there don't want to clean either. I know they are old and tired, so I want to help. But it is so discouraging to hear one say Eh, sayang about paper bags and food containers, and to see the other keeping used masks and apple covers to make crafts with. I am torn between staying there and not, but whenever I'm away I tear up thinking of that junkyard being the last place either of them rests in.

With that knowing of cockroaches scurrying around and the cats vomiting in places we can't see, comes the lack of appetite. You know how grandmothers will force you to eat, even when you don't feel like it looking at the state of the house. It makes you want to cry to her about it, but your family has a history of rolling their eyes and laughing when they see your tears.

So what do you do when the two places you sleep in and eat suddenly stop being safe? The fact that you don't have an answer builds more walls around you, driving you to dark corners where fear resides. That's the answer: you don't know. Your safest place was work, but it's closed because of the virus, and not even reading takes your mind off of it.

Yesterday I woke up from the strong fear of the house I live in becoming like my grandmother's place. No wait that was a lie, I woke up from my nephew screaming and one of the kids banging the scooter against my bedroom door. The anger was already there the moment I woke up and looked around my bedroom, from the baby mattress to the old televisions they chuck in. I wanted to spring out of bed to clean, but I couldn't do that without the light and my brother whom I share the room with was still sleeping.

From there the anger manifested, even playing stupid restaurant games and streaming reality television. The kids' voices were getting louder, the throat was getting dryer and the bedroom was getting more ominous. It did not help when I finally stepped out to find the accursed scooter right at my doorstep, waiting for me to trip on it.

Of course I hadn't, but watching my older brother and his family sitting there without any regard for the mess made it look worse. I wish I had lifted up the scooter and placed it in front of the television instead of the other side of the door. A subtle yet dangerous move, knowing the lack of anger management my older brother has.

Later on in the evening is where this fire of his comes into play. I started cleaning the dining table, so suffocated by the mess on it. It's hard to admit that it's my fault for doing this with a frown and an attitude, because I know the older people in my family will take this as the conclusion. They have a fear of being told their little rebel isn't the only one to blame.

Along comes a cake. What I saw was a cake in a huge plastic bag and two more cakes with the same packaging, so I decided to put them together. My mum says Hey, papa punya cake. I told her Rimas lah, and my dad snatches the plastic bag up with his own attitude and mumbles loud enough for me to hear, If rimas just get the hell out of here lah.

The next few minutes is a blur. I'm not sure which order they happened.

My dad mentions something about besar kepala.
I throw a piece of dirt somewhere between my mother and younger brother and she gasps.
My dad says, Sejak dia ada matair ni dia fikir dia dah besar.
I swipe  a basket of apples off the table and they scatter onto the floor.
I slam my first onto the table and shout Nothing to do with him lah!
My older brother shouts from the living room Eh kau asal?
He gets up and stomps over to me, repeating Eh kau asal? KAU ASAL?

I have seen that view of him coming closer and closer to me so many times, I didn't react. My childhood at home is flashes of my grandmother stirring me iced milo, my mother bringing home snacks and my older brother beating me while I lay crying. I was so used to being beaten, I hardly flinched as he came closer, but it was my mother's shout that shocked me.

My older brother stopped short, and being so close to me didn't make him stop shouting. I could clearly hear him speak, but he yelled Kalau bukan pasal anak aku, aku dah lama lah rembat kau! I've heard him say 'Rembat kau sampai mati' so many times, right now I can't remember if he had said this yesterday as well.

Behind him I saw his daughter peeking out at me, and I remembered how she once witnessed him throwing a chair at my mother. She actually recalled it, even though she wasn't even three yet. The irony was flashing in my mind, but not quick enough before I saw my father had stood by my older brother.

For a second, I honestly thought my father was trying to stand between us. But he stood next to my older brother while they both stared down at me. And my father said Eh memang dah lama lah nak rembat dia ni.

The two older men whom I was supposed to trust, the mythical creatures I was taught to believe would protect me. Instilling such fear in me in my own home since childhood. I always ignored it, seeing how other daughters and sisters have had it worse. Raped by their trusted men. It took so much effort to convince myself that my older men are just as horrible, and I am allowed to feel hurt.

All this happened minutes before Maghrib, but I was losing more and more tears without breaking my fast. The first person I thought of was my only girl cousin from my mother's side, who lived across the road. Almost ten years older than me, I know she already has most of her life together. And I always thought she was the best person to speak family drama with.

But after a while it was clear she wasn't for me. I went to her for comfort, but the conversation suddenly turned to me. I'm not saying it's your fault or I'm taking sides, but here please hold this blame for a while as I lecture you about your behaviour, oh and here's a lecture about your behaviour during the merisik too.

It was the last thing I needed, in bed and tired and scared. Two other faces flashed in my mind, the person I want to spend my life with, and the person who is difficult to make plans with. Even with unfulfilled plans and unread texts, the latter's home is my home again. We probably wouldn't be friends if we weren't cousins the exact same age, we are so different. But it is so easy to find refuge in her clean and quiet home.

So here I am now, having cried my eyes dry. It doesn't matter if my parents or older brother has made it this far, because they wouldn't understand much. It is why I am undeterred by being labelled 'playing the victim', because I am used to getting my words taken out of context.

I believe it is a vast improvement for me to find a solution in marriage and less so in suicide. Hearing my father accuse me of being big-headed initially made me angry, but maybe I can make it come true by following the good example of the person I spend most time with.

My father was right, I am different after getting this boyfriend because he treats me well, him and family and friends all. There is a reason why I am always laughing in their company and then I get home and everything falls apart again. There is a reason why my niece whispered to my mother, Uh, I don't like aunty's boyfriend because when he is around, aunty like action.

Months ago I told myself to endure my parents just so they could cooperate with me for my big day. But as quiet as I have been, only expressing myself through cryptic posts and blurry montages, I have my limits too. I've had enough of the physical abuse that I endured up to 17, and I will not allow anymore mental abuse past 25.

alone in a crowded car

I am a different person outside this room with the dusty books and scribbled notebooks. I am another different person outside this entire house, with either the company of music or another person.

Anyone outside my own blood.

Years of being chased by the discipline master for my hair. I've hidden behind it for as long as I remember, and the only proof I once didn't care are the photos of my bangs at six, the centre partings at the age of nine.

After twenty-four years I finally found myself. I believe this is me, with these easy conversations at work and in another person's extended family. I believe this is me, with the kindness to strangers and a distant memory of social anxiety.

But with all the changes that came with a better relationship, I remain the same in some ways. I still turn my head to stare at trains and I still climb on the sides of moving escalators. I still get my hair caught in car doors and water bottles, and trip over the tip of my own sandals.

With a year and three months to go, I wonder if I will adapt well. It took my entire life to find the person I have become, with all the clumsiness and unnecessary depth. I doubt I can continue being this very person after marriage. I have to reflect wisdom and maturity. I have to turn up for family gatherings in a headscarf no matter how ugly I feel, with a smile on my face no matter how much I want to die at the moment.

And even after a day with your family, sitting between your sisters-in law with your nephew on my lap. Sharing a cup of mocha with your father and choosing my engagement ring with your mother.

I return home and everything falls back down. And I am doubting things will get better once I am part of your family. In fact I'm fearing it will be worse because I made this choice of becoming someone's wife, somebody else's someone. I will not be my own person anymore, and I can't stay in my bed crying because that's me being selfish.

So gone are the days of spinning around you or kneeling down to greet a cat or laughing hard with your friends. I will have to find another version of myself to live with, after spending my whole life finding the person I am today.

These are the things I tried telling you in the car today, but they went ignored with your eyes on the rearview mirrors and hands on the steering wheel. And then the car door opened and your mum asked me to squeeze behind instead, where I spent the better part clutching on to your nephew for another part of my life. Another part of me that I have yet to find and accept.

'afraid of time'

I am discovering new fears everyday. 

All the scribbles in my diaries from three years ago, all the cries of being 'afraid of time'. I get it now. Time is my captor, I'm scared of getting heavier with fear as I grow. I'm scared no amount of my kindness can erase all I've done.

The farther I run the quicker the past catches up with me. No ghosts by my bedside, or abnormal heartbeat rates, or past loves calling again. Nothing is chasing me but I am weighed down by everything.

What do I do when I'm thirty and my life revolves around the one person I want to see everyday? When I have a breathing child with him, looking at me with curious eyes that turn angry down the road. 

What do I do at fifty when my child starts coming home late? Or learns to answer back to her father and I have to watch the two loves of my life fighting? What do I do when she wishes someone else was her mother instead? 

What do I do at sixty when I am tired but I have to watch a new set of kids come into the world and grow again? 

Seventy, when the words on my books are suddenly too small for me to read. When my favourite songs from decades ago start to fade out and become white noise... when you start to forget what year we are in or where we live or who I am...?

What do I do at eighty when you are gone? You say I will have our kids, our grandkids, which just bred more fears; what if they don't like me? What if they don't want to hold my hand or even sit next to me because I smell of oil or I mumble too much? 

What do I do if I'm still alive at ninety and I've only spent my whole life wishing I was dead? 

After twenty-four years of dark, I admit my fear of my past. It will catch up to me one day. So what do I do when I am under a roof with the only person who knows how to calm me down, but I still awake to accelerated heartbeats and voices screaming in my head and fire on my skin?

I'm scared, Faruq, and I'm scared having you with me every day doesn't help. The world is still too loud for me and no wedding band will change that.

Can't.

'Love' doesn't change anything. It gives a different perspective in the day, but come night and it is the ugliest thing. My love for trains and insects and a human to call mine? Without sunlight they're just strips of my raw skin hanging from my face.

A book that I wrote isn't supposed to exist. Songs I'd listened to shouldn't be familiar to me today. Truth is, I should have been dead three years ago, in the month of April. Or even from way before, June of 2015. I shouldn't be having these panic attacks on my single bed because I should've died on one, four and a half years ago.

What do you blame when everything is fine and you're still feeling like this? I can't breathe I can't breathe I can't breathe

Sel

I tend to turn conversations around. Too many musings and theories in my head that threaten to explode. Sometimes I can't help but want to expose them all, with whichever lucky person talking to me.

With a passing colleague, with a chatty customer, with one of my many aunts, I think twice before saying anything. I replay a question over and over, making sure it's understandable. I rethink the details of the story I want to tell, whether something is considered oversharing.

But with the right people, once I start talking I can't stop. Background information. Context. Unnecessary detail. The right people have been with me long enough to know the gun that is my mouth. They may have blank faces until I say something that doesn't quite make sense.

I don't know if my words hurt anyone. Maybe if I save all the bullets for myself they won't. The tendency to talk worlds about myself is justified by the aspiring writer in me. But snap myself out of it and it's just called self-centered.

Do I turn these conversations to be about me? Or do I nod in rhythm until they are so far into their story that there is nothing to add from either of us?

When she is telling me her reading interests, do I ask about the books she has read or do I tell her Ah, my taste is the opposite, blah blah blah me?

Weeks ago, I did neither. I smiled and nodded, and we fell into silence. I looked down to start plucking my nails. By the time I thought of what to say, she had started talking to someone closer, and I drifted off.

For a while I thought I'm doing better than I ever was, throwing Morning!s to every colleague I pass and talking to Pezzo cashiers until they give me a discount. But here I am on my second full-time job still bad with people. Lost as ever between my enthusiasm and selflessness.

I saw her stumbling around the back on her own today. Not too worried to run to her then, but concerned enough to blurt out Are you okay? when she entered my peripheral.

Cramps, which I didn't have the antidote to. Cold sweat, which for me could only be cured with a blanket. Again, I fell into silence with her. My hands are so cold, she continued, and she reached out to hold my hand in hers.

I noticed for the first time how small her hands were.
But apart from that, I didn't know what to do and I'd been silent enough with her.
I just gaped at her wedding ring, which I hadn't noticed before.

She helped me out by saying she was going home, taking half the day off. All I could say was okay, even when I had branches of words to tell her.

I made a mistake

This always happens. I want something so much that it unhinges me. I hold on to it so tightly it breaks, from its solidity to fragments. From my sturdiness to doubt. So, so much doubt.

Did I fuck up for leaving my work hanging from last year? The already-little confidence that dwindled when a local publishing company finally replied my e-mail, only to reject me.

Maybe the mistake started from the moment I decided to center my first novel around Wind, Rose, Flame. A story that has now long expired, a useless friendship tattooed on my back years ago.

Maybe it was the coloured-paper storybooks I made in primary school, or the diary entries from secondary school. Maybe it was the blog posts I furiously typed out in year one in place of overdue assignments. Or the poems I scribbled in my notebook on the morning bus rides to work.

I have fallen in love so deeply that I am now unsure. The happiness scares me sometimes, I think it's me at my most vulnerable. Anything can happen. Anything can break. Flames die out, except the ones sparked from anger. Nothing has changed, yet everything is different. I am high, but I am in the best place to fall to my death.

Once upon a time I thought a better man and a better job would bring me out this pit.  A better man brings tiny nephews and a better job brings colleagues exactly twenty weeks pregnant. A better me brings silent cries and carefully hidden pain. Who do I blame when everything is okay?

Now it's dawning on me that the higher I am, the deeper my trough.

fifteen thousand

When I was still with my ex-boyfriend, my mum already had her sights on my future with him.
Our wedding, to be exact.
Fifteen thousand, to be exact.
I thought it was ridiculous; I also thought she was joking.

I got to know that she was serious, from how she would not stop mentioning it. I reassured my ex and myself she was asking for such a high amount because of the trouble we had conjured. By that time, he had already gotten a job as a steward and I thought she was just trying to take advantage of the money he'd be getting.

Almost two years later, she is still hung up on a fifteen thousand dowry only now she is expecting it of someone else. Over time, as ridiculous it really is, I realise it isn't funny anymore. Something simple is being made difficult by my own mother.

As a result of how small this country is, I got to know that my boyfriend's brother is married to a friend from secondary school's sister. We spent a better half of secondary school as best friends, but as adults we drifted further and further until we just stopped caring.

But her sister remembered me from the one time I'd come over, almost ten years before. And just like that, I had an old friend back. The last time we met was the last day of August: the birth of her and my boyfriend's second nephew. Both their families were there, including her new sister-in-law.

Somehow I was still in the mindset that anyone who is married should be older than me, right? Her obviously pregnant belly assured me of it. When I first greeted her I'd taken her hand and put it to my nose; she didn't question it, maybe thinking I was younger than her.

Later when I started talking to my friend, I got to know her sister-in-law was 24, just like us. Somehow it slipped my mind that we were way past a marriageable age. That was when I noticed more engagements and weddings among my Instagram following. Some of whom are younger than me.

I can't help but to feel envious. Sometimes sitting on the couch with my love and his parents, one of them would suddenly bring up an upcoming wedding. Some way or another the conversation would wind its way back to our own plans for marriage.

I've listened to their reasons why they just can't give in to my mother's desired amount, even if they can afford it. And wouldn't I be a laughing stock? Not even a diploma, zero sense of religion, not very household-oriented.

Even if the dowry is out of the picture: knowing how my mother is, no daughter of hers will have an ordinary wedding. Not even an ordinary engagement. No, there must be an elaborate ceremony, with her colleagues and friends, more than her daughter's. There must be a five-star hotel, with a famous eighteen-year-old violinist from Malaysia that she is obsessed with.

That is the complete opposite of what I dare to envision.

weakness

This person was always someone to look out for, so they say. If there is even a sign that you'll get a good one, lucky you. On the contrary, if they take one glance at you and decide you aren't worth shit, then you aren't worth shit. They're a mother-in-law, already eyeing your every move, already blaming you for every wrong her own child does.

In the past, this figure I had didn't think so highly of me. I dare say she was probably the only other person who thought lower of myself than I do. All for the lack of a headscarf, not even saved by my long sleeves and jeans everyday. She even overlooked her hurricane of a child, not the slightest suspicious that he served alcohol on his flights and did the forbidden in the room he rented in Singapore.

I grew up sheltered, with a mum that allowed me to wear sneakers with my baju kurungs and supported me in every awkward phase I went through. I had an aunt who took me in when my parents didn't know what to do anymore, and my dad's many sisters and sisters-in-law loved me throughout my childhood and youth. You couldn't blame me for being wary, despite the many motherly figures I've had my whole life.

He told me his father was easy to go through because they were closer. That his mother was the one who so blatantly asked when he introduced his ex to her, "Betul, ni yang kau nak?" It didn't matter how much he really liked her; his mother accepted that, but it didn't stop her remarks and constant asking if he was serious. Not a good thing to hear when it was just about the same things my own ex-boyfriend's mother said.

She was the first of his parents I'd met, at a bus interchange I so loved and detested. I shyly asked how was she, before watching her kiss his cheeks and vice versa. Barely a month since we got together, I thought it was the purest thing I'd ever seen. Gone from my mind was the times my own mother kissed my forehead when she or I left for work.

I saw how fair she was standing next to her son. Got how the people in his stories were surprised to know he was her youngest child. My heart melted, and that day I replayed the tiny interaction over and over, unsure if my smile and shy "How are you?" were good enough. I was still falling for him, but I couldn't comprehend feeling the same way towards his mother. I didn't understand why my heart skipped a beat when he said she thought I was pretty.

I only got a taste of how talkative she was at our first dinner together. A contrast to the silence his dad sat in, she laughed and brought out memory after memory. I still didn't know what to say, or even where to put my hands. I just sat there with a dumb smile, wondering why his parents weren't interviewing me like they had joked they would. It seemed like there was always a gap in his family that was made for me and I'd simply just filled it.

Eleven months later, she too can't escape the random comments and musings that spill out my mouth. Sometimes she was the one who asked about my job or my plans or simply where her son and I went on our dates. Other times when it was just me being my own version of talkative, she simply nodded. She would make a face when it was clearly something she didn't care about, but that's the thing. I didn't take it to heart. She just reminded me of my love, with his straight face while I rambled on and on.

You're lucky enough to find a good person after a bad relationship. Imagine finding a motherly figure who only speaks well of you, even with your uncombed hair and ripped jeans, even after seeing you drool in her son's bed. I'd gone over with holes in my knees twice, but instead of reprimanding me or making snide remarks behind my back, her invitations kept coming, until my ripped jeans remained untouched at the back of my wardrobe.

She remembers my off days and my schedules, constant asking him if I would be coming over. She saved my favourite chicken part for me, and she refrained from cooking beef when I casually mentioned cutting it off completely to save the earth.

"Kenapa tak makan daging lagi?"

"Beef ada big environmental impact on the earth."

"Abih chicken tak impact the earth?"

She'd asked with a hint of sarcasm, but her giggles washed off the discomfort I would have felt if my own mother had said it. I thought of my own mum, telling me off for being 'picky' when I never really liked beef in the first place.

She was the reason why I went home one day and just decided to eat without cutlery for the first time. How I told her so sadly that my own family members laughed at me for my mistakes, thus why I only ate with my hand in secret afterwards.

Five new cardigans, a mix of my usual black and two shades darker, after a trip to Kuala Lumpur. "I didn't think twice, I just took the kind of jackets you always wear," she had laughed in Malay, tossing me bag after bag of cardigans.

Me, cutting hotdogs in her kitchen while she worked on the rest of the magic. How she had time to stop and correct me, while giggling at the mistakes I was making out of something so simple.

Now I am in tears, thinking of how much she loves me and I, her.

I've always wanted to ask her where she and her husband had gone dating in their days. What age she started donning the headscarf, whether it was her own will or out of love for anyone. I wanted to ask what comes into her mind when she looks at her youngest son, a split image of the love of her life.

I wanted to talk to her about my mother, about how she never took me seriously. About my father who beat me senseless and always let his anger speak first. I wanted to tell her about how my parents only used religion in their favour, the reason why I could never head down that path.

I want to tell her that she has changed me, with the way she brushed my boyfriend's hair and touched his face. The way she leaned against her husband and called him Abang... so adoringly. The way she laughed in the backseat when I talked mindlessly in shotgun.

With her teasing and giggling and remembering the little things about me, I chose the only other woman who is your weakness.

man

I saw you first, from posts on his Instagram. He has your eyebrows, though yours are more faded and sprinkled with age. You saw me later through photographs he kept in his phone. I looked younger than I was, making you tease him for courting a kid.

Two days before his graduation we finally met, though there was not much more from your subtle nod and my shy smile. You reminded me of my own dad, from how you spoke quietly to the way you brought your head back to look at your phone screen.

You were always the subject of our conversations at the marble table. He respected you, he was weary of you, he kept secrets from you. Your discipline was just as tough, but he never hated his father the way my older brother and I did ours.

Years ago I thought if our father was shorter than us, it was our turn to stand before and protect them. I long had the honour of being taller than mine, but it is nothing compared to how he towered above you. I had to watch the way he cared about you in a way my heart couldn't comprehend.

Maybe it is the way your face lights up whenever I visit, and my father's frown whenever he sees me. Maybe it is your longing to teach me about religion, compared to my father's usage of god's name in anger and pride. Maybe it is the way you take our relationship seriously instead of shrugging my feelings off like a phase.

It was him showing you pictures of me that tugged at my heart. It was looking at the old photographs where you looked exactly like the love of my life today. It was being told how much you'd wanted a daughter, that made me cry before him for the first time.

At first I envied him for that ability to love a man for his harshness. Through your impatience with your three sons and love for your two daughters-in-law, your gentleness with your nephew's autistic child; eventually I understood.

It was your family that welcomed me, from your mother who only stops grumbling about everything when I visit; your niece who insists I don't have to kiss her hand despite the age difference; your nephew who got me to try durian for the first time in my life.

Sadly that meant the fatherly love I felt came from somebody else's instead of mine. Against all odds, I chose the man who was the spitting image of my love. For now I can only smile at him in greeting, until the day I am allowed to hold and kiss his hand in respect.

// foreshadowing

28 02 19 // 16:27

This wouldn't be the first time I tried this writing thing again. Only two years ago I was painfully loyal, checking boxes after each successful day having written a diary entry. Getting bruises and ink all over my fingers, rough and callused skin at the edge of my middle fingernail. 

I write numbers everyday. Invoice numbers, purchase orders, customers' contact numbers. I'm not a numbers person; I can barely multiply single digits without losing my head. But words are always mine, and until now I believe I do not have blood but ink in my veins. 

Two years ago I was in an entirely different state. I mean, I'm stuck in the same country with no means or intention to ever leave; but my mental state was different back then. I was unsure. I was a child despite being on the way to 22. 

Maybe now I am still scared, but of better things. Back then I was afraid of disturbance in my own space. Of buses crashing into me when I was just standing at the sidewalk. Of lunatics attacking me while I'm minding my own business. Tiny ripples that I'd remember forever, even after they've long dispersed.

Now I am afraid of bigger things. Of crashing into stone instead of a soft bed designed to inhale my shape. Now I am afraid of cars swerving suddenly to the lane I'm on. But the fear could only come from the fact that I was out there in the first place. On a parachute, on pillion behind a new man.

I found a better man last year, albeit one who abused my affinity in the worst way a love could. He smokes, but it is the smell of cigarettes sticking to his skin and lips that I grew to love. Sometimes I think about the past, about a boy whose affection I grew to hate. I was the reason that he started smoking, during his days at Outram Park. He is why I wish I am the reason for somebody else to stop.

Next month would make it the ninth since we got together, since I found him. He found a best friend in me, as empty as I am, a void to fill his pent up emotions into. He had been lonely for the previous four years, left behind without explanations and missing thrice as many almosts. While there I was, chasing the same two impossibilities.

Somehow we found each other, even when we are completely different. Maybe the other sides of the spectrum, with his logic and my imagination. Different from whom we loved, five years ago for him and five years long for me. Even with our differing tastes in music and faith, we found comfort in the same marble table, the same lullaby that is his thirteenth floor flat, the same longing during hard days at work. Most of all, the same person: each other.

I got unbelievably lucky there. Maybe next I would find a better job, with better things to love. I would love colleagues who did their part instead of relying on me for every enquiry. I would love friends who spoke in English first and would never leave me out. I would love as an equal and not a superior.

In a way my relationships would correlate with my careers. Here I am now, with a man I treat as an equal. In no way have I belittled him or felt neglected, even after more than eight months. I've never been happier and healthier. For now I am not only content but genuinely happy.

At least, until I clock in tomorrow and remind myself of my newfound indifference for my job.

heights

There was absolutely nothing special about roads up until my second year in poly. Before that, they were just long, winding snakes that cars and buses used to get places. Nothing great about that, right? Somehow, it was that ordinariness that took my wonder.

Leaning my head against the window always felt like home, both warm or fogged up glass. There was intimacy even in the vastness of highways, with earphones shutting your thoughts and music in. Anticipation for trains to run across the overhead tracks, like not knowing where a boy's hands would go next.

I went so far as to calling it home and seeking comfort, crying as 88 took me down TPE the way one would only dare cry in solitude. I thought nobody else would love them the way I did, even if I didn't know the way around that much. Another obsession for something so mundane, like loving the sun amidst the crowd complaining of the heat.

It was so for the next four years, until I met somebody who used and knew the roads better. He went on different routes, more than I certainly did on the same two bus services. He couldn't give a shit about how the roads made him feel. He didn't even care about listening to music on the move, which was absurd to me.

Still, hearing the expressway's acronym from his mouth felt as intimate as someone you liked whispering your name. Even if there's nothing romantic about my favourite songs competing with the wind for my ears, or the little heart attacks I get when a car suddenly swerves to our lane.

From the top of a double decker to pillion, it's a downgrade from the highest point I could get. I can barely hear the lyrics in my earphones, or sit in peace with the constant panic. I am vulnerable, but safe enough to tilt my head back and expose my neck. Home enough to choose the old expressway's newfound heights, even with someone who never thought twice.

rain

Once upon a time, I liked the rain. Dashing through with my older brother when I was nine, ignoring the tsks from parents awaiting their kids with umbrellas or raincoats; jumping in dirty puddles with my best friend at fourteen, until our shoes were heavily soaked. And just like any other sixteen-year-old trying to be emo, I walked in it with my earphones in and hood up, accusing the world of being against me.

It didn't take long for me to hate it, once enjoyment turned into annoyance. I started grumbling at the edge of Elias Mall, knowing the rain was still heavy enough to turn my uniform completely see-through. It seeped through to Year One, frowning when I was forced into narrower paths to navigate the polytechnic blocks. It stayed throughout my I'm-A-Flame phase, believing wholeheartedly that raindrops were poison.

I turned into my grandmother, who grumbled about the dark skies whenever she had a pail of wet laundry to hang. Wise words from her, not very deep but sticky enough to stay on the walls of my head: biar panas terik, daripada hujan lebat. I don't remember what prompted her to say so, but it was one of the things that made me favour hot weather.

Wait a few years, and then I met you. It was my first time knowing somebody with a bike. Right, my older brother rides too but we grew so far apart, I stopped knowing simple things like his occupation. I wasn't congratulating him when he passed, like my grandmother and aunt and cousin all were. I didn't care about him leaving the house with his helmet during a storm.

On the contrary, we avoided getting on your bike at the slightest dark cloud. Or when our phones chimed at the same time, our weather app announcing 'heavy, thundery showers expected in the east'. For some reason there was neither that fateful morning, when you looked up to the sky with a raised eyebrow, then fell for my prediction: It's not gonna rain lah!

You were smart enough to run the amber lights minutes later, just as the raindrops got heavier. Waterfalls were streaming down my visor by the time we entered the highway, but it was the least of my problems when I realised how barely visible the nearest vehicles already were.

I was shaking by the time I hopped off your bike at our destination, my wine-red shoes having turned into a dark, murky colour. You still had to deposit your bike out in the open carpark, and it took all my strength not to shiver as I watched you run back to seek shelter with me.

Our clothes and footwear were heavy with rainwater, and there was no shelter to my workplace. Neither of us had umbrellas. All we could do was wait and try to dry ourselves, you tipping your sandals over and me, removing my socks to squeeze them.

We were a mess, but I never stopped smiling. I reminded you of the day before, when I'd casually mentioned wanting to know what it felt like to ride on your bike in heavy rain. I got what I'd wished for, when years before I would have pushed all the blame on someone completely not at fault.

That morning didn't stop you from riding in the rain again, greeting me with a completely opaque shirt that was actually blue, dark pants that should have been maroon. It didn't stop me from getting on behind you, shaking my head no when you offered to wipe the soaked seat.

Slowly, feelings evolved once more. You wouldn't brush my hand at the red lights but down my right leg instead, and you wouldn't turn to say you love me, but to ask how I was doing in the drizzle. It would be colder, but I'd endure it the way you had to endure the hot weather you hate.

After you, my love-hate relationship turned into something else. They turned into acceptance. Deep down I still thought I was made of fire, that the rain would never be my friend again. But I chose the helplessness that flooded me as rain flooded my socks, and with you, I would never think twice about riding in a storm.

red

I've only ever seen you drive for a while. Smooth the whole time, so sweet with your left hand over mine. You only ever let go to dance to Black Pink's new song, and you only ever raise your voice when exiting the highway, screaming Drift, drift, drift!

But most of the time, you are reckless on the road as a rider. Drifting in between cars without a care in the world. Going above hundred, knowing that your bike can't quite take it. Holding an angry hand out towards drivers who don't let you pass. Picking up speed to run the amber light, sometimes even going through the red.

I have to admit, your bike might be the only place on earth where I don't trust you. You're not too shy to glare a driver down, even if it sacrifices your attention for the road. I've come to accept that tapping you on your back only makes it worse. That your road rage is almost always cultivated by that split-second fear of another driver's recklessness.

Just today you finally removed your probation plate. Just as you miscalculated and rode off the road and up the kerb, barely missing a traffic light pole. It got a shriek out of me, audible even through the music from my earphones. It took me a while to regain control of my own legs, and I had to ask twice if you were okay, even though my own attention was on the tire tracks through the mud.

It just became another secret to keep from our parents. After your fall on the expressway where you nearly slid under a bus, your mother demanded that you text when you're about to ride off, and when you reach your destination. My mother shows no exception, always asking me out of the blue, Did Faruq fetch you again? Are you always wearing your helmet properly?

It's okay even if you know what you are doing. Even if you are the slowest, safest rider in the country. Despite all that, my own paranoia brings me down. The thought of a wild dog appearing out of nowhere, making you swerve hard to dodge it. Or my loose cardigan getting caught in your tyre, tearing out my arm along with the sleeve.

It's not like we get to talk on the road. If we did, I would constantly ask for your reassurance, to tell me that my paranoia was impossible. You are the logical one, never letting fantasy or imagination get in the way. It doesn't help that your speed and ferocity are just as high, constantly at loggerheads with my own thoughts.

But the few times you do stop at a red light, I am back to knowing you are the safest place in my life. You lean an arm against my knee, a signal that it's safe to hold your hand. To put an arm around your neck and rest my chin on your shoulder, even. You don't have to say anything, just let your voice vibrate through to me when you turn your head slightly to mumble I love you.

I am helpless from behind, a passenger who needs assurance every kilometre. You make it seem so easy to erase my panic just by gripping my hand. Granted, I am unable to do the same for you, only getting in the way of your road rage when I tap your back to move you along. But I will always choose that pause, that hesitance before it picks up speed. I will always choose the brushing of your hand at the red lights, in spite of your recklessness before or after. 

groceries

I have never met a boy who does the grocery shopping for his mother, let alone have a supermarket that he prefers. When you moved out of Pasir Ris, you couldn't rely on the 24-hours Sheng Siong anymore. The one that sits in between your old home and mine, growing alongside us.

When we first started talking, we wondered if we had ever crossed paths unknowingly. Your secondary school was a few blocks away from mine, your old home exactly thirty from mine. If it hadn't been for the condominium, your living room and my bedroom would have been in perfect view of each other.

But I couldn't imagine being in that supermarket at the same time as you. Not when you were always running errands for your mother, while mine only came down on her own or with my niece. Maybe she's the one who has locked eyes with you before; it's a little funny to think about.

Our conversations started as small talk in early June: my mum asked me to get some stuff. They became Do you want to follow me to Sheng Siong or I'll just send you home first? Somewhere along the way I became your companion, helplessly carrying your basket while you run around the aisles, knowing where everything is.

You moved to Sengkang, but the supermarket at the top floor of the nearby mall wasn't good enough. Now that I think about it, how convenient that the girlfriend you send home everyday lives near the one you favour. You trade her backpack for bags of groceries in the box of your motorbike, one last cigarette while she snaps your receipt for a cashback app.

Your mother is so lucky to have you. Three sons, but one of whom knows which aisle the spices are, which potatoes are good, the name of every different leaf. The way you treat your family ignites this little flame in me, from the patience with your grandmother to the obligation to run every favour your mother asks. It's been getting harder to say no to my own mum, just thinking about the 'okay's you give yours.

I am out of place in the supermarket, in my jeans and hundred-dollar sneakers. I never know where everything is, or what half the things on your mother's lists are. But I will always love you for the way you paused one night, passing me your phone instead. Why don't you help me find all these things today? Go, while you pushed me on the small of my back.

I loved you even when you cleared your throat for my missing the coconut milk. Even when you made side-eye while I walked rounds around the aisles looking for sawi. Even when you snickered at me for directly translating laksa leaves to Malay when on the phone with my grandmother.

I am out of place again in your home, comfortable enough to lean all the way back on your bed, but still too nervous to eat with your parents. Too shy to even hand your mother the bags I had offered to carry, too shy to say I'd bought a bottle of her favourite winter melon tea. But it is somewhere along the way that I had chosen the groceries in your box, be they the ones you picked out or the ones I found. 

sidewalk

I told you about my obsession with parallels, first thing when we started talking. You didn't understand my image of a second me walking beneath, her feet mirroring mine. But we met, and you became another piece of my parallels.

You were the man turning twenty-five, the sides of his helmet squeezing his cheeks in. Nearly four in the morning when you deposited me at 606 for the first time, helping me unbuckle the straps around my chin. It was finally the beginning of something new, hugging you until I thought my heart would explode.

I told you about the night barely two months before, when somebody else dropped me off that very sidewalk. He had a bike with him too; an orange dockless one that continued being shared among strangers after he abandoned it at his own void deck. I was in the hoodie that he had just bought me, the very one I'd worn meeting you for the first time.

I went back further eight years before, when I was fifteen and somewhere else you had just started poly. When yet somebody else sent me home on his bike, my white Converse jumping off the pegs by his wheels. In his hoodie this time, a long black one with thin white stripes. It was only then that you understood my parallels; that eventually, you would find your own.

Having you in my routine now gives me extra ten minutes of sleep in the morning, sometimes twenty. You refused to let me go work by myself as long as you could still send me. So there you always were, scrunching up your face beneath your helmet as way of waving. You always come when I least expect it, making a U-turn at the vacancy of the lot before stopping right in the shade.

Sometimes you wore glasses, lens when you had to be somewhere else afterwards. Sometimes you would have packed lunch for me, with an egg that your mother rushed to fry while you were in the shower. And sometimes, once in a blue moon, you would be soaked from the rain, your maroon pants turning dark red.

I had hoped you would be the last person I'd see on this sidewalk. The last person I would wave goodbye to until out of sight. The last person I would wrap my arms around and kiss. It's been more than two months since you started dropping me off at 608 instead, but it was enough for me to choose the arms that lifted me off the old sidewalk, stones pressing against our chests.

marble

Two blocks from mine, to avoid the prying eyes of my older brother or father coming home from work. Your bike against the parallel yellow lines, with the spare helmet placed haphazardly on the edge of the seat.

There used to be another couple sitting on the ledge of 607, but we outlasted them. Maybe they broke up, or maybe they were platonic friends who found other people. Or maybe they just got bored of the mediocre view, the ordinary parking lot with hardly any wind.

In the beginning we sat on the kerb, where we had to keep shielding our eyes from the sudden headlights of cars turning in. Confusion and an identity crisis, when I told you not to fetch me from work like you usually would. But you showed up, a shadow on the ground before you pulled my shoulder and spun me around.

We talked it out, something I wasn't very familiar with. The argument closed when we leaned in to kiss, and the moment ended when a cockroach scurried past, along the kerb and somewhere among the grass.

Over time the marble table at 608 became ours. I have never seen anyone else sit there, not since we made it routine. Not even the one time I confidently declared out of the blue: I have a feeling that someone is sitting at our table right now.

But like magic after every trip to the minimart near my primary school, there it waits. There are always new cigarette butts around it, probably the only sign the table has of other occupants. Sometimes an empty pack or two is abandoned on it, prompting me to snort with disgust.

I will always sit facing the end wall, with you on my right. Your best friend joined us once; he had to sit opposite me. On another night, two of your secondary school friends visited, one of whom started smoking with you. I stood my ground despite the smoke wafting towards me, being seated between you two. This is my seat, I had whined like the 1995 kid I was to you guys.

The marble has seen enough of us, guests or no guests. From laughing at videos on Twitter to playing games we discovered from ads on Instagram. It's watched us down our lychee tea and milk coffee only a hundred times, while we rushed to decide the minute to leave.

Sometimes I liked to imagine the tiles of the chessboard holding pieces of our conversations. A black tile for the time we insisted on our own definitions of a 'half day'. A white for the time we talked about our fathers and their different ways of discipline. Another chipped tile for the night we sat there in silence, neither refusing to give in.

At the end of the night we always have to let go. It's never our home, this lonely table at this quiet void deck. When we're gone, or even before we frequented it, who knows the habits its occupants have. Who knows if there's some other couple or lonely old man out there who loves this sadness like I do.

Yet at the same time, I know each time I leave I never look back longer than I have to. A two-seconds glance just to make sure we haven't left anything behind, and that table will be off my mind until the next time you fetch me from work. Until the next time we are lost and have nowhere else to drink.

You have one last smoke, while I am already on my playlist, one bud hooked over an ear. You finish your cigarette, then the last bit of your tea before you dump our bottles into the recycling bin. I get up from your still bike, watch you strap on your helmet and get on it.

I balance along the edges of the kerb while you follow me on your bike, until we finally have to split paths. True that I will never once look back at it, but it is always then that I choose the marble table over which we talk, about the past eight hours and their little tests.

haikal

He found me first.

In the pictures I was barely twenty-two and somebody else's, but my name and smile were enough. A flick of his finger was the only thing he could do, so he waited, until it was my turn to find him.

There were just two photographs, one barely reaching the top of his chest. It looked like it was taken mindlessly at his desk, somewhere in the dimness of a bedroom. The second wasn't even of him, but a cat lying outside a flat and glaring into the camera.

A hello and a Hey kitty cat became late replies and constant apologies. They became unimportant questions just to keep the ball rolling. Laughs stretched out to fill the emptiness of the text box, and deals made to disguise mindless flirting.

We first met on a Wednesday evening, in the corner of a Starbucks called Rochester. I was an hour early, just fingering the strings on my parka while I waited, careful not to finish my caramel hot chocolate so quickly.

He wasn't what I expected, watching him saunter over to my table and take the seat next to mine. Not when he spoke, with the mild stutter he carried. His shyness was already established on his profile, while my tendency to shoot my mouth off was written on mine.

But I didn't take long to be myself, from laughing with my mouth open to grabbing his arm and running across the road. He even went along with my made-up superstitions; believing in the luck that came with spotting a C151B on the East-West Line and pointing out that we were on the same wavelength when we walked with the same foot first.

It took less than a week for his lines to fade. A text to this girl was his first deed every morning, whether or not she'd replied his messages from the night before. Sometimes it was a picture of the cat outside his flat, sometimes a song.

She told him she was made of fire, so he gave her songs about following your flame.

She told him about her dreams at night, so he got some wire and feathers from his best friend's parrot to make her a dreamcatcher.

She told him the one dessert she could eat everyday for the rest of her life, so he went to town for Hokkaido cheesecake that they would share in plain view of the train tracks.

She said she was fearless, so he laughed when she shrieked at a cockroach scurrying past her feet.

She told him about her cousin bringing her around in her car, so he drove her down the expressways home, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while she screamed out the songs on his playlist.

She told him about her past, so he stayed up all night with her on the third anniversary of her loss.

It wasn't difficult imagining him sitting at his desk, twining wires into the shape of a dreamcatcher. Imagining him recognising the new train model and believing he would have good luck for the day. Or imagining him sitting in front of the restaurant at level one while I was sneaking out the back door.

He saw a future with me in less than two weeks, but unfortunately for him I didn't share that perspective. Despite being a daydreamer myself, I thought he was delusional. For the first time I knew how to reject someone whom I didn't feel the same way for. For the first time I was the one staying grounded while he was long gone in his own fantasy.

He found me first, but I didn't choose him.

5:32

Three years ago at this hour I was screaming for my life. I didn't know what was going to happen, yet I did, yet I didn't. I know it's been forever, so why do I keep bringing this up? To play the victim probably, you're right. It served me right to get myself pregnant in the first place, who asked me to sign all the papers at the hospital, it's been three years just get over it?

But what gets to me the most is his steps away. The pain I went through was nothing compared to watching him move on so easily. All along it was just another problem and not his own flesh and blood. That is still the source of my anger, at how my sacrifice was just a burden he got over. He has already replaced me I'm sure, and probably on the way to replacing you as well. Unless he doesn't want it the way he didn't want you. 

I wanted to be the mother whose photo you would always bring around after her death. The one whose world revolved around you, whose every action was controlled by wanting the best for you. I wanted to be a creased photograph in your wallet, pulled out in times of sadness and remembered for all the life lessons I taught you. 

But it turned out to be the opposite. I was the one left behind in this world with nothing but a blurry image. The one stumbling around wishing you were alive. I still feel an ache in my chest where my heart is supposed to be, at the mildest thought of you. Only recently I realised you were merely 13 centimetres, written so tiny at the corner.

No man would understand this loss. Women symphatise, but they don't know the regret and amount of love I was ready to give you without saving any for myself. I've been proven now that I don't have the means to love anyone, not a real human being, just trains and insects. 

It gets harder as my niece grows older. You would have been just a year younger than her, probably with the same fat cheeks and energy and intelligence. She's starting to be like me, with her stubbornness and pride, refusing to say sorry despite knowing she was wrong. She once exclaimed how she loved trains, would you believe it?

I still get scared hearing her cry, believing it's you, out to get her. I still get nervous when she comes into my room or holds my hand. At any moment now you could take over her out of anger or jealousy. Is it the guilt messing with my imagination, even three years later? I want to say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but you'd be too young to even understand the word if you're alive.

I only ever mourn for you on the 10th of June. The date I lost you will always be more familiar than your actual birthday; you would have been a September girl like me, but when exactly? These little things will forever be a mystery, while I continue watching my family sing happy birthday to my niece every November 24th. 

If you think this is a letter in letting you go, you're wrong. You were a part of me and always will be, despite the fact that, if the afterlife exists, we will be on opposite ends of the spectrum. You were killed innocent, while I swear I will only let myself die a sinner. I'll continue believing every moth that lands on me is you, somehow, and nothing will stop me from crying whenever I miss you.

-letter to the daughter I never had