silently another scar tonight
through the window, through the screen
i shot the little girl
her face by the side
stare and i stare
were we really a key away
we once were, and an arm apart
now we're just, apart
someone is writing a message
i hope i dun press enter by accident
yet i hope that you know somehow.
i shot the little girl. you saw. yes i did
everything is still the same, just silently now.
without incident, except for the dreams at night.
I gave myself away, and then you called.
The knife that stabs at my heart remains mercilessly sharp.
I removed your name card from my well worn wallet. A glance brought it all back.
The words that you said to me half a year ago, in your faux chinese accent as you handed me the name card, lingers on morosely in my mind, "wo shi lee wei wei, qing duo duo zhi jiao!", and i burst out in laughters.
stab and slash.
I'm fine.
i merely shed one drop of tear tonight. it flows, like a scar that cuts from the edge of my right eye to the corner of my mouth, from a day in November three years ago to last August, and from then on till today. one smooth, winding drop. flowing like the deepest ocean. that's all. i'm still fine.
if i leave it on my face, can i taste it tomorrow?
2 more days.
the heaviness of calloused breath sunken between letters, the gasp for air after each full-stop; you can't tell anything from the frivolous look of words.
the rain outside wouldn't stop pouring, but it will stop sooner or later. the sky will run out of tears too.
i tried to remember the last few times that you called me on your own free will. sadly, it wasn't difficult.
you called to ask about places to bring your parents for dinner
you called to ask how to get to the chicken rice coffee shop
you called to ask where the polyclinic is
you called to ask how to direct the cab driver to your new place
then you will hang up.
i feel so special.
.
5 or 6pm. to pass you the present. you said you'll call after meeting your family. i knew you wouldn't. you didn't. you were somewhere else instead. 12.30am. i was waiting downstairs with the present for you. i told you a day ago. i told you it won't take long. but you wouldn't. you said you're tired. too tired to open the door and take the lift down and take the lift up. you sound irritated. i felt brutally wounded. it was so difficult. good thing the place was deserted. it became a farewell present.
the rain got heavier.
20 minutes on foot, 5 minutes on wheels, yet an eternity lies in between. The love you once had, you now treat like dirt. Are you being controlled, you gotta ask yourself. And you said you are sorry, one can hardly tell.
.
I couldn't say goodbye, couldn't look you in the eye. I forgot my last kiss, and you didn't remind. The saddest ending comes when the sky is full of stars and you're not by my side. You said tomorrow night, yet you know that your tomorrows and laters are lies after lies. So I lay on cold stone in the cold wind till the coldest clouds filled the starry night. In the end, the walk home on a broken foot was the easiest part.
.
To my dearest dumdum, i love you, and this is our goodbye.
it can be the simplest of thing, just half an hour or so to pass you whatever it is. why must you make it sound so difficult..? and to say good bye. you didn't even know.
misery prolonged.
i want to pack all the memories together, the words and the pictures and whatever that is left of us, and give them to you, should you one day find the need to remember. but i can't do it. can't look at them for long without turning away.
.
the mother threw away the disposable lunch box that i have been saving for months to keep the fried rice that i was still hoping to cook for you. and the spoon.
.
i will stop remembering, but i won't forget.
everyday there will be a time when i drift off into an abyss where distance is abstract and all that others could make out is the gaze of emptiness in my eyes.
this is the moment of all moments where i wonder in endless wonderment of how, in good time and with the simplest of words can i tell you very dearly, and i've always wanted to be able to tell you, in all honesty, that i love you.
because i do. and this is what you do when you really do. though nothing seems to happen even when i truly do. the sun still rises while my darkness looms, i can't see where or what i am gazing at, and every tomorrow still dreams of where today wouldn't or couldn't go.
this is the moment when i wish your laughters that swirls me round the world come from you in real time, still carrying the warmth of your breath that makes my ears tingle with fuzzy delight; not the coughing river of endless memories.
every day.
i want to pick up my phone and tell you.
but your phone seldom works these days.
it is morning, the tomorrow of yesterday, and i would like to sleep now.
I know you had chicken chop because I didn't hang up the phone after you thought you did.
My face pressed against the window grills, I looked across the street at where you should be. Right there. The clattering of the background noise sounded almost melodic. Occasionally, you waltzed in and out of my ear. My eyes will close as I hold the phone closer, straining to hear every single treble of your voice. I could feel you, the image nearly complete.
Didn't matter that I was running late for my appointment. In that moment, time was running in the past tense, a destination that I couldn't catch, anyway.
Six, seven minutes went on in this long distance call, till you got lucky, I hello-ed to a numbing white sheet of silence, and the signal was lost.
the dreams are still coming.
what is contained in the day
tores free in the darkest of nights
and the morning after
carries the weight of the wanton excursion;
imprints of your name in this pillaged heart
What or how to feel. My feelings spinned in a daze this whole day while it was aglow in fuzzy warmth. Am i better at concealing my emotions already; the many times when my sense of you slipped below the horizon, you were in sight, but you were gone, and my heart sank as I took deep silent breaths. in my own silence. your voice rings in the background to the phone in a tone once familiar and so crushingly close. I sit in the greatest cold, shivering from within, with your scent submerging me in you, yet remained impermeable, insensitive to the fading grasps of my fingertips.
.
put me to sleep
this is the morning of 30th Nov, in the wake of 29th. i feared its coming, a day of two funerals. one for you, and another for me, my long suffering heart.
stephen my friend.. your passing hits me harder than I'd have thought, given that we were not the closest of friends. yet tonight I shed tears for you. can't quite bring myself to write much of you yet. the day when i visit Anfield, our spiritual home, I will lay a flower for you upon Shankly Gates.
and for you, my heart, my dear dumdum. i am silent.. but i miss you everyday. you won't be reading this, but happy anniversary nonetheless. =(
a surreal hug, may it transcend from my thoughts to you, through the air and the distance wherever you may be, under this sky we share. may it reach you tenderly, brushing pass your arm, reaching around the small of your back, like a warm caress from someone in your heart on a november day, cold. may the good of this world conspires to bring this hug to you.
only with death, do we understand life
and the inadequacies of just living.
Stephen old man, I remember you. You'll Never Walk Alone.
You've been missed.
.
Stephen Loh - Dragon boat accident - Cambodia
NTU - NIE - NJC - Maris Stella
NTU Hall 1
Wake at 7 How Sun Close, 27th and 28th November.
Take 22 from Serangoon MRT. about 6 stops away.
Funeral on 29th November.
tremors echoing
from time to time
unerringly,
towards
this forsaken land
the injured lay slumped
hand over his mouth
muffled cries
in fear of
being found
two weeks and hurting, that should be a hairline fracture on one of my metatarsals, possibly the first or second, on my left foot. hope it heals by itself.
same for my old ligament injury above the right ankle. soreness and some swelling persists on.
same for the broken parts elsewhere. that should be permanent.
and it wasn't to get your sympathy.
My forehead feels heavy with sporadic twitches due to the recent build up of muscular mass from excessive frowning in a blood culling effort to prevent constant thoughts of the emptiest, saddest kind.
