How is it that strength is measured in the amount you manage to lift? It's weights for the boys and heartbreaks for the girls. You keep testing the physical and emotional pain you can endure, just so you can be admired for how much you withstand.
When I think about it, the heart is so fragile compared to everything else. How is it possible for it to be the strongest organ in our body? Yet the moment I am writing this, I lean against my desk but my heart pushes me away from it each time it beats.
The heartbeat is so strong that it'll reverberate through another person if he leans against you. Keep still, the both of you, and eventually no one can tell which beats are whose.
My heart has gone through most of it: excitement when my favourite cartoon came on. Anxiety when I had to give a speech in front of the class. Ache when the stupid boy I liked changed his Facebook status to 'In A Relationship'. Euphoria when the swing I was sitting on went ninety degrees from the ground. Fear when I woke up in the middle of the night with a force on my chest.
I've had my fair share of weight, nothing special enough for people to think greatly of me. Maybe from the outside looking in, the heat is barely felt because I'm the only one getting eaten by the fire. All they see are the fading scars, never the blood pouring out.
Despite everything, I think my heart still hasn't had enough. You know how some people are so adventurous for some reason, always with the need to travel and climb mountains, jump from cliffs and shit? I believe my heart is one of those people, always looking for 'fun' where they could possibly die.
We're both at our highest, waiting to be pushed off all over again. Or our lowest, if you're looking at us from another direction. I once read a story where an anchor dropped from the sky and a sailor descended, as if the sea was beyond the clouds. Since then I never really figured out the difference between peak and trough.
I'm sure everyone has heard about that Japanese method of fixing broken pottery with gold. I thought it was beautiful at first, until I realised the absurdity of it. I don't want my heart to be attractive, for people to seek shelter in it. Let it be drowned, charred, broken. Anything but beautiful.
Bleed red. Stay in a burning house until the flames turn you black. Swim in the deepest recess of the sea until you turn blue. I have put you through everything, but it is dipping you in gold that is the hardest. God forbid you ever become a heart of gold, filled with kindness and generosity. We don't have much left for ourselves.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Pregnant
If you had a chance to meet anyone, dead or alive, who would you pick and why? This question was always asked in my English classes, being composition prompts or journal topics. I never had a good answer, probably just naming some celebrity to thank her for the songs she put out.
After some thinking on the bus this morning and all my twenty-two years of living, I've found my answer. I want to meet my mother when she was pregnant with me.
I want to know what she went through with me forming in her. What pantangs she disobeyed, thinking it wouldn't affect anything. When she was pregnant with my elder brother, she refused to eat rice, saying the smell made her nauseous. He grew up with some kind of condition where he's almost phobic of rice.
With all the differences between my brothers and I, I wonder what she consumed when she had me. Alcohol, cigarettes? Sometimes I convince myself she must have taken some drugs, for me to have grown up this way, unable to look at anything without exaggerating its ordinariness.
Was she tender with all forms of life, thus my care for snails and insects of all things? Did she walk straight all the time like a wild boar, thus my obsession with lines? Did she go swimming when she was a few weeks pregnant and nearly drowned, thus my wariness of water?
I can't help but wonder if she had some kind of depression having me. I know she was angsty with my elder brother, which probably explains his anger management issues. But what kind of thoughts did she have with me? Did it ever cross her mind to kill herself along with me?
I want to meet my mother when she was forming me, because I wonder what she had to be like for me to be this way. Or what she had to go through with this eccentric life banging against the walls of her womb. I'd like to know if it was her pregnancy habits that made me like this, or my already existing flame that burned her from the inside, causing any of her high or depression or anger.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Red
There's only one artist I'd immediately recall when thinking of the colour red. In fact, that's pretty odd in itself, the act of pondering about a colour. Who does that? Colours have always been there, just the same as the air we breathe and the numbers we count.
But this girl made me associate her with red, especially more than five years after her best-selling album in 2012. She just released her sixth last November, where she constantly used the word 'golden' in her lyrics instead. It's like your body is gold; Deep blue, but you painted me golden; Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo.
Five years back during interviews, she was constantly talking about the relationships she had and the chaos that came with them. She talked about the colour red symbolising not only the roses and passion, but also the anger and bleeding hearts and fire. She said that a love is only right and real when it is not red, but golden.
I don't want to be that girl daydreaming about 'love' anymore, much like how this girl has grown out of her country songs revolving around fairytales. You found me and you're no longer a daydream, no longer the "you'll find someone better" that everyone was telling me about before I met you.
Five years ago today you became mine. You brought me out of my misery, out of my shell but most of all, out of the east. You're right, I will always blame you for everything that happened in 2015. For leaving in 2014. But I will also thank you for showing me the first half of the red line.
With all the passion and anger and betrayal that came with the red, you brought me the North-South Line as well. I grew to love Woodlands especially, even after you first left me. I took 168 for the first time, falling in love with the expressways.
Orchard and Somerset, where we had our first few dates. Your ITE and camp days, when I frequented Choa Chu Kang just to fetch you, then Novena when you worked part-time at Mount Elizabeth. I loved Woodlands the most, where I would send you off to 950, where we would sit beneath the tracks with our drinks and takoyaki and talk about everyone walking against us.
It wasn't all sweet, of course. Jurong East was where you dumped me for the first time, shoving me off your arm and walking away. Bishan, becoming the place I'd go to just to get away from you. Dhoby Ghaut, where I stormed off in anger after yelling Fuck you! in front of everyone. Marsiling, where you stumbled around the blocks, calling me thirteen times with no answer.
Back in 2012, I called the boy who broke my heart Red. I wish I hadn't, because he isn't worthy of it. He is an empty face to me now, a meaningless void that spat me back out when 2013 and you came along. I know it's stupid for me to revolve you and this relationship around an MRT line, but I have both of you to thank for everything.
Without you, there wouldn't be red and without red, there wouldn't be you. I love you, and I love the North-South Line. How I wish the both of you could intertwine forever, but now you're in Pasir Ris with me, caught at the furthest end of the green line instead.
With all the passion and anger and betrayal that came with the red, you brought me the North-South Line as well. I grew to love Woodlands especially, even after you first left me. I took 168 for the first time, falling in love with the expressways.
Orchard and Somerset, where we had our first few dates. Your ITE and camp days, when I frequented Choa Chu Kang just to fetch you, then Novena when you worked part-time at Mount Elizabeth. I loved Woodlands the most, where I would send you off to 950, where we would sit beneath the tracks with our drinks and takoyaki and talk about everyone walking against us.
It wasn't all sweet, of course. Jurong East was where you dumped me for the first time, shoving me off your arm and walking away. Bishan, becoming the place I'd go to just to get away from you. Dhoby Ghaut, where I stormed off in anger after yelling Fuck you! in front of everyone. Marsiling, where you stumbled around the blocks, calling me thirteen times with no answer.
Back in 2012, I called the boy who broke my heart Red. I wish I hadn't, because he isn't worthy of it. He is an empty face to me now, a meaningless void that spat me back out when 2013 and you came along. I know it's stupid for me to revolve you and this relationship around an MRT line, but I have both of you to thank for everything.
Without you, there wouldn't be red and without red, there wouldn't be you. I love you, and I love the North-South Line. How I wish the both of you could intertwine forever, but now you're in Pasir Ris with me, caught at the furthest end of the green line instead.
Monday, January 08, 2018
Disgrace
Regret is always heavy, especially knowing you had the power to say or do something different. Something that could have changed your day, or someone's perspective of you, or your entire life. Today I'm heavy with my silence, knowing I had the authority to step in; only I didn't.
Working in retail for nearly three years, I've gotten the natural instinct to look up when someone says 'eh, excuse me' no matter how far or rudely it's called. This man's voice was so loud that I couldn't possibly ignore it; I thought it was a customer who needed my help.
But he wasn't calling me. It was a man standing by the Malay books shelves, his huge e-scooter thing parked next to him.
He started yelling at these two ladies, a pair I had served earlier when they asked me about calligraphy ink. The younger woman was noticeably timid, her voice and gaze low but never forgetting her gratitude. "Thank you so much," she shyly said earlier, still four words more than what most customers would say. She had an accent that I didn't recognise, very unlike my Malaysian colleagues with their Cantonese or the ones from China.
"Eh excuse me, you never see that you hit me is it?!" the man was yelling at them, the younger woman with a basket chocked full of supplies. She turned back to look at him, obviously shocked and confused.
"I never hit you." she said, loud enough for me to hear.
"What never hit? My thing drop what, what never hit?" he snapped back, referring to his stupid e-scooter thing that I always thought make their riders look ridiculous.
"I never hit, the thing drop itself." she answered, visibly confused. Her voice was still calm compared to his.
"What by itself?! This thing so heavy how to drop by itself!?"
And by then I was gone from their radius, instead walking in the cashier counter towards my Stationery supervisor. Even then I could hear his voice, repeating again and again: "Eh, this thing expensive you know! If break who going to pay!? You got money pay or not, huh!?"
None of my colleagues heard it because they all had their attention on their own customers. I was so busy concentrating on this argument in the distance that their voices still ring clear in my head, even til now.
I just continued helping my Stationery supervisor, packing the scanned items into bags while she made transactions. By the time I looked up again, I found that the next customer making payment was the pair of ladies I'd served earlier. I smiled and took the basket from her, and that was when our interaction was interrupted with the man's raging voice, already on his way out yet still tormenting this woman.
"Eh next time you walk you see in front! Bloody idiot. Eh this thing expensive you know, if break who going to pay?! You got no money pay one lah!" he keeps repeating it, oh my God oh my God, stop. And then he says something new: "Fucking idiot! Fuck you lah!"
And that was when I looked at him and saw how ugly he was and I wanted to do something when the younger woman's voice broke me out of my trance: "Do you have the camera here?" The way she said camera was unusual, like kah-may-rah, her voice still stubbornly calm and low. "This man keep saying I knock his scooter."
In the background all I heard was, "Eh fucking idiot! Next time you see in front of you when you walk, stupid bloody fucker!" and he turned to the person he was with and said, "Eh... benda ni mahal, dah pecah nanti dia ada duit bayar ke!?"
And all I did was snap at him Eh enough lah!, maybe the rudest I could have been to a customer, only for him to keep going on and on with his complaints and profanities and how expensive his stupid e-scooter is. And I wanted to spit on him, a man of my own fucking race.
My stationery supervisor was next to me, confused and only able to continue scanning the items in the woman's basket. It was only after the queue was cleared did I manage to tell them what I knew.
And I wish I'd said or done something differently for her and against him. I wish I'd intervened and told him to stop the moment it started, or shouted at him to get out of the store before I call authority, or just said to him not to tarnish our race's image. Anything at all. Anything but shut it out like a fucking coward.
I thought the man was a disgrace to our Malay society, but I guess that honour belongs to me. For not speaking up. For not helping her. For not doing things differently. For not intervening when I was the one in the store who had the power to. This will always be one of the things I will always think about, wishing I'd done something. It riles me up.
Working in retail for nearly three years, I've gotten the natural instinct to look up when someone says 'eh, excuse me' no matter how far or rudely it's called. This man's voice was so loud that I couldn't possibly ignore it; I thought it was a customer who needed my help.
But he wasn't calling me. It was a man standing by the Malay books shelves, his huge e-scooter thing parked next to him.
He started yelling at these two ladies, a pair I had served earlier when they asked me about calligraphy ink. The younger woman was noticeably timid, her voice and gaze low but never forgetting her gratitude. "Thank you so much," she shyly said earlier, still four words more than what most customers would say. She had an accent that I didn't recognise, very unlike my Malaysian colleagues with their Cantonese or the ones from China.
"Eh excuse me, you never see that you hit me is it?!" the man was yelling at them, the younger woman with a basket chocked full of supplies. She turned back to look at him, obviously shocked and confused.
"I never hit you." she said, loud enough for me to hear.
"What never hit? My thing drop what, what never hit?" he snapped back, referring to his stupid e-scooter thing that I always thought make their riders look ridiculous.
"I never hit, the thing drop itself." she answered, visibly confused. Her voice was still calm compared to his.
"What by itself?! This thing so heavy how to drop by itself!?"
And by then I was gone from their radius, instead walking in the cashier counter towards my Stationery supervisor. Even then I could hear his voice, repeating again and again: "Eh, this thing expensive you know! If break who going to pay!? You got money pay or not, huh!?"
None of my colleagues heard it because they all had their attention on their own customers. I was so busy concentrating on this argument in the distance that their voices still ring clear in my head, even til now.
I just continued helping my Stationery supervisor, packing the scanned items into bags while she made transactions. By the time I looked up again, I found that the next customer making payment was the pair of ladies I'd served earlier. I smiled and took the basket from her, and that was when our interaction was interrupted with the man's raging voice, already on his way out yet still tormenting this woman.
"Eh next time you walk you see in front! Bloody idiot. Eh this thing expensive you know, if break who going to pay?! You got no money pay one lah!" he keeps repeating it, oh my God oh my God, stop. And then he says something new: "Fucking idiot! Fuck you lah!"
And that was when I looked at him and saw how ugly he was and I wanted to do something when the younger woman's voice broke me out of my trance: "Do you have the camera here?" The way she said camera was unusual, like kah-may-rah, her voice still stubbornly calm and low. "This man keep saying I knock his scooter."
In the background all I heard was, "Eh fucking idiot! Next time you see in front of you when you walk, stupid bloody fucker!" and he turned to the person he was with and said, "Eh... benda ni mahal, dah pecah nanti dia ada duit bayar ke!?"
And all I did was snap at him Eh enough lah!, maybe the rudest I could have been to a customer, only for him to keep going on and on with his complaints and profanities and how expensive his stupid e-scooter is. And I wanted to spit on him, a man of my own fucking race.
My stationery supervisor was next to me, confused and only able to continue scanning the items in the woman's basket. It was only after the queue was cleared did I manage to tell them what I knew.
And I wish I'd said or done something differently for her and against him. I wish I'd intervened and told him to stop the moment it started, or shouted at him to get out of the store before I call authority, or just said to him not to tarnish our race's image. Anything at all. Anything but shut it out like a fucking coward.
I thought the man was a disgrace to our Malay society, but I guess that honour belongs to me. For not speaking up. For not helping her. For not doing things differently. For not intervening when I was the one in the store who had the power to. This will always be one of the things I will always think about, wishing I'd done something. It riles me up.
Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Years
2012 // 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016 // 2017
The girl from my past who always cared
About the mocking laughs or being stared
Eyes glued to the floor and dragging feet
Cheap sneakers rubbing against concrete
The girl from my past with one eye hidden
Her friends moved forward but she didn't
Photos of their graduation put up on walls
She barely escaped the loop of school halls
The girl from my past recovering from him
Her metaphors filling her head to the brim
Discovering the world in roads and tracks
Came to be her last time above the cracks
The girl from my past with a second heart
Days at a hospital almost tearing her apart
The brightness of her sun fading over time
Robbing her own life, the next perfect crime
The girl from my past drowning in regret
Her second soul will remain an unpaid debt
Strained eyes against her world's darkness
Her worthless body in her fragile harness
The girl from my past burning her flower
Who found and picked her from her cower
The tornado not only carried her but threw
Over the lion city and life's unusual view
The girl from my past who always cared
About the mocking laughs or being stared
Eyes glued to the floor and dragging feet
Cheap sneakers rubbing against concrete
The girl from my past with one eye hidden
Her friends moved forward but she didn't
Photos of their graduation put up on walls
She barely escaped the loop of school halls
The girl from my past recovering from him
Her metaphors filling her head to the brim
Discovering the world in roads and tracks
Came to be her last time above the cracks
The girl from my past with a second heart
Days at a hospital almost tearing her apart
The brightness of her sun fading over time
Robbing her own life, the next perfect crime
The girl from my past drowning in regret
Her second soul will remain an unpaid debt
Strained eyes against her world's darkness
Her worthless body in her fragile harness
The girl from my past burning her flower
Who found and picked her from her cower
The tornado not only carried her but threw
Over the lion city and life's unusual view