In wait
For twilight, dreams, familiar windows & eternity
How does a body remember?
This album of writing dates back to August-October this year; tracing old promises, new bruises, and continued convictions. As remembrance of myself in a time of transit, I hope this form of archival feels intimate to you, too.
1.
I’m alone on the bus tonight, waiting for home. I’m seated on the left of the last row, thinking about departures. Of birds shedding their scales, and fish hitting the shore. Of beak touching beak, and a crane dipping its toe in the lake.
Twilight has come. Will we still see each other in the dark, wrist touching wrist?
A view of myself and my uncombed hair, light sparkling off the standing pole of the bus and the grass we sped through last summer. I can still smell the petals trickling down your neck, my head on your chest. Your hands, reaching for mine.
I’m on the bus again, waiting for daylight. You call me at five, our voices hushed, children who’ve wandered too far off the playground. We recall the bird perched on the swings, and the crumbs left on our cheeks. I’m waiting for the last stop, two birds flying home.
2.
i stopped painting to live, but i haven’t been living much at all. dreams escape me and doves refuse my hand. the ink in my hair stains my pillows squid blue. i stopped knowing how to want, joints sore and used, stiff from sleeping on stone. face first, tears seeping through the cracks of cement. i haven’t been running through the flower fields like i used to. knees soaked in saltwater, unable to reach for my hand that has grown cold. my reflection’s turned muddy, the mirror covered in cat scratches. my hand has forgotten the pen, the paper swallowed in my intestines, refusing to excrete. life, however, remains an inhale/exhale. the light, caresses the mold on the canvas, whispering, you don’t have to breathe. i whisper back, lisp on my lips, throat full of salt, i want to.
3.
I already have strange, sudden aching pains in the leg at eighteen. Sometimes a fist tightly hugging a thick, steel nail, shoved up my calf. Or, two cubs wrestling over the ligament below my left hip, tossing and turning. Often, it’s glass lodged in the arches of my feet, already making a home. I’d feel my veins crackling like the break of winter, then turn acid green, crawling round my ankles and knees like a poisoned tree. My lumbar creates a makeshift shelter for the fledglings to nest.
I let them feast. Head on the pillow, the spikes melt, scalding hot vapor that ravages my flesh. My torso boils, and the dogs keep eating.
4.
The escalator handles keep scaling up, train wheels clawing into soot and soil. My neck, locked in place, continues staring at the platform lights — fossils of an ancient firefly. The summer is never-ending and my ankles can’t seem to reach the end of the tunnel.
I’ve accumulated six months worth of proof that I want to live in work. I mean that work needs to be a reflection of myself, or better yet, a tossing in the lake. I mean that I want to redefine work (but really, everything is almost always unconsciously redefined). I mean that I need to paint one self-portrait everyday, and anywhere can be a studio.
Standing four-legged on sunburnt floors has been a searing realisation. Of what I can tolerate and what I enjoy. The importance of self-fulfilment and the inevitable emergence of my ego. Work can simply be repetition. Separate, arranged, disconnected. But I am a wild animal prowling through house curtains. I must not only see myself in a mirror.
I must touch myself through the blue screen/body odour/surveillance camera/tattered fingers/morning dew/stranger’s breath/blood moon. I have to, have to breathe in work.
I want to run towards an end. A door carved at the forks of eternity.
There is no one way to feel human. My life, is a red string tying my body to creation. Hence, to live is to die and be reborn on a surface which lands in the eyes of an other. I’ve accumulated six months/a year/a singular moment — proof of alternate futures, dwindling desires, and fuelled courage. The train station is still running. I still have hope.
5.
The city is fickle.
Every day I sob a little, and I write a little more
> I wonder why tears fall. By the window of a faraway train, does the little girl bawling out in tears miss home? Do the tears on her cheek startle her with their lack of warmth? In some distant time, can tears form oceans?
> When does a house feel like home? I watch as my hands rip paper off the walls, ruthlessly, paint crackling and following it too. My heart chips away, just a little. The trees outside lay barren, an invisible winter. My back catches between the bedsheets and the closet doors and I feel a burning roaring inside.
> I can’t cry but I can weep. A flood, a brutal flood, swimming above my lungs.
> If I can’t swim across the ocean, can I send my tears over to you? I’ll send them across the sea, rising through winds and dancing through rainfall again and again. Until it reaches the monsoon winds, gently caressing your cheek. You’ll wake up one afternoon, head out the door and step into a tropic storm. The sky will be grey, the floors muddied, and you’ll know — that my tears have reached you. I will have reached you.
> These days, I cry at the fledgling swan fanning its wings over the lake. I cry, at the old man toeing his cigarette into the drain. The trees, boneless, shedding their scales along the street. Meadows, and the bob of a small child’s head wading through it. I cry over everything.
> I think it’s necessary. Grief is necessary. I must tear my heart out with my blunt claws, just to stitch it back all over again. A necessary process.
September playlist;
Bye, Summer - IU
moonchild - RM
After that… - mei ehara
People - Agust D
Where Am I - Mio Si
so far away - Agust D feat. SURAN
6.
I’ve four hours left of September, where I am. The nights are cold here, the mornings even colder. I’d look at the glaring sun and think of its cowardly face I usually see in the evenings, that I’d scream at from the top of my lungs out the balcony. I’d think of the kitchen spiders back home, if they’d befriend the magenta folk over here. I’ve three hours left until the last quarter of the year. I don’t know what to do with myself.
The ambulance is screeching from my window and I’m wondering when to sleep tonight. It’s always been hard, but now harder than ever to give up consciousness. Who will I become when I awake? What will I see? Who will remain, leave, forget, move, or stay? Who will we remember when the sun sets again?
I am, honestly, afraid. I am afraid of all the faces that’ll begin to permanise in my memory, and all the ones that’ll gradually phase away. I stare at the photos on my wall to try and recall the sounds and smells and touch of the people I love and the indescribable warmth of their presence. It’s an attempt just like that of trying to hug the moon. Now, the sky’s different, and I don’t know where to find it.
Images 1, 2, 3, 5 by me. Image 4 edited from here.
I hope my words have reached you. I deeply wish you a comfortable and heartwarming end of the year.
thanks for putting this out, always love how themes of nature in its wild and rebellious nature screams out in your writing.