(for greater understanding, listen to the album)
the pilotthe awards hanging all over his home and head didn't matter anything to me.not as much as the street he lived in that i visited only once, casuarina trees and dark gloomy skies.i felt more romanced by the singapore flag blowing in the wind above his domain, by overhead bridges with train track views.more impressed by his route from west to east in his uniform, more so than what he actually did in camp. his academic intelligence didn't help him with a broken girl, a failure as both daughter and mother. hour-long phone conversations that didn't push anyone together, a common affinity with words that still contributed to difference. i know nothing about him then, i know nothing about him five years later, but i imagine him the way he imagines me.
the 1
the rose
i haven't uttered his name in a long time, when it was once what kept me going.
it was never meant to be, some people die before their novels are written, and the world apart from them will never know the greatness of their words.
we dismissed the almosts so easily, but sometimes i still thought about it, just curiously.
deep down, i know i only saw him so romantically because it never happened.
we all know if it did things would burn out the way all relationships do, like the very one that brought us together in the first place.
thank god i didn't pluck this rose, for if i did, i would be returning him dead and broken where i uprooted him.
cardigan
the hurricane, 2017
i tried to run all around the lines, but he was everywhere.
even in places he hadn't been, like workplace offices, like the space beneath my bed.
he was even there to replace other men i was sitting with, pilots on piers and strangers on trains.
i once realised he was a better manipulator of words than i was, his sweet nothings and empty promises, using me like outerwear.
but i fell for it every single time, even after i took so long to break free. he does leave like fathers and run like water, things he was almost.
and i stay there in my brokenness, almost as if i was waiting for the next hurricane to hit, until one day none did.
the last great american dynasty
the fantasy
i don't know where i get these daydreams from, perhaps from the many books i read, the many songs i listen to.
i imagine things, i imagine tall, brunette protagonists each time, despite their descriptions, blonde or american, i put myself in these narratives.
having the times of their lives ruining it, even with something good going on.
that's how i picked myself up each time, leaving things burning in my wake and laughing in the midst of it.
plowing through souls who tried to help me, mine included, until i upend their lives like nothing.
now i have two males in my life i am truly afraid of losing, and i don't want to know how i will cope when if when if
by laughter, by delusion, by anything but tears, and i'm not sure if it shows strength or plain derange.
exile
the hurricane, 2014
i know my coping mechanisms were not just daydreams, knowing one other person was affected, from the outside looking in.
seeing me thrive without him did him in.
he knew me as an awkward, social decrepit person, so where were all these friends coming from?, he couldn't help feeling betrayed, missing out on something.
it didn't help that his friends had turned into my friends, conversations by the beach and phone games on train platforms.
i knew he read my pages, and there was an underlying sadness that missed him.
it was easy to replace it with anger, to erase it with nights spent with online friends i would never meet again.
my tears ricochet
the hurricane, 2018
if you didn't know me before hurricane season: you can see by now the bane of my old existence.
this was the one that did it, after five years of returns and grudges.
he finally made some sense of my metaphors he used to laugh at, he became a steward, taking to the skies and finding new loves there.
i caught a glimpse of my diamonds glinting on his uniform before he lowered me into the earth.
i keep wishing he is the one to cry sometimes, but we both know it has never affected him as much as it did me, i was the only one buried after all.
mirrorball
the brother, older
i have very little pleasant memories of my childhood that involves him, a living perpetrator.
watching tv together? would turn into screaming over the remote.
walking home from school together? he left me crying at the void deck as a little girl, knowing i was afraid to take lifts alone then.
he bought me a diary for my seventh birthday, a hobby i keep until today, one of the causes of the rifts between us.
for he rebelled loudly in his teenage years, with punching matches and cigarettes, my time to rebel came, and it was only through written words and pens.
what a disappointment i must have been.
i sadly don't have much happy memory of mine, but i imagine how older brothers should be, through books and movies.
i imagine him trying to make his little sister laugh, antics, i imagine him hunting down the guys who break her heart, things which he never did.
but he cried so hard at my wedding as he hugged me, things i could never imagine.
seven
the uncles
my mother's older brothers, she had so much more than me in that sense.
i remember jumping into their arms when they came to visit, crying from the fourth floor unit when their lorry drove away.
i remember the older uncle staying with us until he couldn't, because he didn't contribute to the bills.
even though he contributed to my childhood, he gave me slightly more love and attention than both my older brother and father did.
i remember me staying with the younger uncle, my mother trying to hit me and him so quickly coming between us.
something my own father couldn't do between my older brother and i.
as much as they made my mosaic, they couldn't come to my wedding, for one was stuck in johor and the other passed away a few months before.
august
the loner
a coping mechanism from 2014, he remained a friend despite how he was treated.
the way he cancelled plans for me, someone he wasn't sure returned the same feelings.
did things i merely hinted at, handwritten letters and phone lockscreens.
he was just like me in ways, maybe those were some reasons why i didn't fight as hard, his arms around me on bus interchange staircases, waiting around for me to pick up the phone.
i know it could have been something, but i extracted petty reasons to make sure it didn't, and that was all he remained, a single raindrop.
this is me trying
the son
he doesn't know words yet, the thing i know best.
but he turns excitedly when i call his name, sadly reminding me of the times my voice didn't matter.
i get talked over and i politely stupidly allow it, i get cut off even through text, you know who you are.
sometimes at my wits end, the only place for me to talk was here, where my words go uninterrupted; but it becomes a breeding ground for misunderstandings.
i hope this relationship will thrive on equal grounds, i hope we appreciate each other's voices when needed.
a relationship only five-months long now, but i take an oath that i will always hear him out first.
after years of falling flat on my face, deprived childhoods and awry youths, i'll find a way to give him the good things that i didn't have,
even through the long days at work and longer nights in my old voices, he is all that i'm trying for.
illicit affairs
the ghosts
i can fix relationships that aren't broken, by pretending to be the missing piece.
i am not ashamed to transparently say, i was once the third party. at first i didn't know, but when i did i still didn't stop myself.
sneaking into second-storey houses, creeping around under blankets, i still feel dirty passing by its train station.
so it's my own fault his pet names started making me giddy with disgust instead, that his cologne is ingrained in my brain, i can still recognise this popular scent anywhere and it makes me go haywire with regret.
and it was this very ghost that i kept looking over my shoulder for, hurricane's hand in mine.
one of the things that broke the relationship, the paranoia, voices in my head that weren't mine, that belonged to his friends both men and women.
invisible string
the partner, before
i didn't know true happiness and calmness until i met the person who would become my husband.
before him, only chaos and pain and many loose screws, but there was something at the back of my mind that kept me going.
only after i met him did i know, it was the feeder bus that went through both our streets, it was the block thirty up from mine, it was the supermarket situated between our homes.
it was airport coffeeshops, rainy expressways, 2013 relationships.
these were the things that kept me going, and where our strings had crossed without us knowing.
and while i was holding other people's hands, laughing at other friends' jokes, i was already loving him before we'd met.
mad woman
the friends
i remember people i have never met, by their spoken words that they usually don't even remember saying, it does make me think i'd made it up through paranoia and insecurity.
after each departure friends took sides, it goes without saying they all flocked to him.
do they know the things he kept from them, the pulling into unisex toilets, the groping hand beneath hospital gowns? no, it's part of her victim play.
the worse part, i know some friends of mine think the same, even my blood relations, and i know the more i tell my story the less of the truth they think it is.
you'd think i would move on with all this peace i've found and settling down i've done, but there are times i scathe.
days wrapped up in my own thoughts, swallowing the screws that had dropped out of my head years ago: i know they see me as the perpetrator in spite of the many i have myself.
i embraced it before, i don't know if i can do it again.
epiphany
In progress
betty
the twin, younger
i thought i would never write about him again, but he is the lowest of the rungs i have climbed.
for the way he had burned me before i knew i was a flame myself, i'd like to think there was a time his feelings were genuine.
even when we were holding other people's hands, back when tweets were still school hall whispers.
i'd like to think he had looked at me with some form of longing, that it wasn't just hidden intentions.
that the rooftop conversations and beachside hugs meant more than hoping i'd put out.
only then i can look back without feeling a year-deep embarrassment.
peace
the partner, after
my favourite, the one most positively lit, the reminder that fire can be good despite it all.
all of it, from the romance of midnight rides to the reality of living habits; i will share the burden with him.
i laugh whole-heartedly to give him good memories, i scream for my life to give him a son, but it will not stop my nags and stresses, things which make this bond so real.
we both know there will always be demons in my head and goosebumps from old colds, his he had easily gotten over, but he takes his time with me.
i have found a kind of peace where two voices matter on the same amount.
a relationship with my many ghosts roaming any mall or train station we go, but a house free of any hauntings, where our silence is comfortable.
hoax
the father
he kisses my forehead again now, but it doesn't erase the ghosts of his bruises.
the many times he chased me out of the house, flying chairs and wardrobe doors tearing off hinges.
a language barrier in our fights, i used words while he used his fists.
for a long time i excused his actions with the blood in our veins, i didn't want anyone else for my father, and his words of love every raya softened me.
i didn't know if he really loved me, up until my wedding, when i came back out after my dress change to see they had all left, because he had somewhere else to go.
he made other plans on his daughter's wedding day.
up until the birth of my son, he didn't come to visit until two weeks later; there was an apology, some understanding on my part, but there is a little disappointment.
if i had to have one piece of sadness in my perfect world, it's him.
end
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