walk away now, you’re gonna start a war

You will get your full measure.
But, as when asking fairies for favors,
there is a trick: it comes in a block.
And of course one block is not
like another. Some respond to water,
giving everything wet a little flavor.
Some succumb to heat like butter.
Others give to steady pressure.
Others shatter at a tap. But
some resist; nothing in nature softens up
their bulk and no personal attack works.
People whose gift will not break
live by it all their lives; it shadows
every empty act they undertake.

Full Measure, Kay Ryan

 

Relevant in so many ways, as I’m here frustrated yet calm at the same time. I imagine this is the moment to be airborne– the queue behind you jostles for their turn; ahead, the air is impotent, you have no idea how it will bear your weight.

 

I wanted to throw open the doors and slam to your chest old stories of jealousy– the jealousy of seeing those August photos, one! Two! Three! Same expression the camera would have seized if it had been with me. Your smile in half flight, reckless flurry of a shirt tail. How I kid myself! If it were me, your eyes would have been veiled, arms not quite daring, though outside the permanence of the picture frame you would have pulled me a little closer as if to say, “Let’s stop this, we only have now.” Only you wouldn’t have said that, instead you said quietly, “You’re gonna go?”, or in parantheses, “You’re [still] gonna go? [I put myself on the line but now you're blowing your chances, leaving this bar when I've just made amends.]“

 

We only had then. I blew my chances because I was erratic and flighty and too pushy when I should have been chill, and oh I was fond of you but I could never take out the best of me to spend with you. The best, in the end, was the exhausting, humid morning when you stroked my vertebrae and spoke of delicious naps on grandma’s floor. Or perhaps, much earlier on, when you were far across the other end of the tarnished candlelit table, and we were getting to be just friends.

x

Meeting you like this, I reject orthodoxy. We not blush over the menu at a reserved table, we do not pay attention to the milimetres between skin and skin on a movie seat armrest, we do not orbit round Orchard Road’s sartorial offerings with the giddy aimlessness of satellites learning to reflect the other. 

 

Sure I hesitated half a second when I recognized, with too much ease, the outline of your back in the ground floor of the museum. But I did not check for caking makeup or dry lips. I was myself in need of a haircut, bare legs boasting every scar for disapproval. You were not surprised. I was a matter of fact, eclipsed by the swaying red lamps on the ceiling and other photographers with their burly cameras. The background not the subject. I think I dropped the use of ‘I’ around you.

 

If there was any discomfiture, it was purely mine.

 

And even then I can’t be sure. This is a chemistry I can’t quite distill, images tumble in pebbles of mercury and to grasp them seems dully poisonous. Part of me considers binding this to the formulae it never followed to begin with. The rest of me realizes it isn’t possible. Or desirable. For all my lows, this is what I need– plasticity.  

 

I don’t know where we started. I don’t know where we abbreviate or ramble, if you ever say anything between the lines. I don’t really want to know unless your narrative spells it out. For now, you bracket me with your arms when you feel like it.

 

Phantom pains glow where my jawline meets my ears and at the base of my neck though you’ve been gentle with me. In the fading night, in the back of your car, I touched my lips to the dips and rises of your face as you dozed, thinking that this too was a kind of braille. You only smiled and kept your eyes closed, so in order not to appear idle and foolish I sat up and puzzled like a watchdog at headlights beyond the window. 

 

You are most abrupt even though there are bales and bales of you I’d like to roll out, slowly, with all the reverence one reserves for tracing the whorls of ancient trees. You are mixing my metaphors. I want to be hungry around you but a cool chill takes over and I euphemise everything. I haven’t any plans or bright ideas, so I just sit in the passenger seat beside you and wait for the ride to drive itself.

Ammunition round 2

Because I like procrastinating, especially when exam responsibilities are hot on my heels and I’ve already wasted time nosing around cloud kingdom. Doom!

 

I like:

• Late night conversations with my pearl of the seven seas/jewel toned blossom, Shar. She dusts all her words with gentleness and purring interest and I miss her absence all the time. Then Kex comes on Skype, her feathery bob a fitting halo, and we scurry about gathering snippets for each other.
• His serious voice on the line asking if I’d like to fill my belly with Al Ameen goodness in the dead of the night. His not-so-serious voice telling of trannies that whistle at his biking. Legs taking my lap for a footrest, the scuffs on his face and arms to trophy a day of adrenaline. Bob Dylan warbling as we’re not even attempting to disguise ourselves in the not-so-dark lane. Swarms of electrons in the inside of my hoodie when he returns it to me at 6.20am.

 

Still, conversation and this gentle escape do not snuff the old unrest. This lonely spell is a long time dying. 10 months now perhaps; I don’t know how anyone takes it for years.

10 days I’ve known you, I shouldn’t ask where this is going, or if it’ll go anywhere at all, but I want to bury my face in your hair and hear you speak. 

A shoutout to the boy with the x-acto knife and no time to reply: may I have my peace of mind? 

Blogging plant

Am I the only one who thinks this is dreadful?! Now I can never kill a plant because maybe it is alive and wants to blog! Do you know the implications of this?!

 

In other news…

“When will you understand that F*CKIN CUTE is not an appropriate name for a koala?!”

“It is…”

“I’m glad you don’t know this koala.”

“The koala is messin with my soul.”

 

I want you to know
When I look in your eyes
With every blow
Comes another lie

is the song I do my readings to.

Bullet points

I love:

• Lists
• Cutting up the street directory and taping the roads edge to edge, the colours flushing together as I mentally plant trees and familiar people: little man queuing for his Today paper, lady with the tissue packets. I should have been a mapmaker instead.
• Snipping. Snipping hair, paper, I like a hesitating scissors through felt.
• Many adults packed into a car. Especially them boardroom suits, no stubble, the ones with polite lines in place of mouths; gingerly popping in and out so as to zip around the city.
• Giant fishballs. This evening I bought two and did not realize how obscene they were. Later I was so mindful I hid behind a pillar to eat them.
• The smell of carbolic soap.
• Specifically, the smell of soap on the back of necks after a shower at the end of a long day, which makes me want to drop this stiff facade and be my unruly self around you, mister.
• Your unruly attention span, mister.

Em.

The Love Cook

Let me cook you some dinner.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daiquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it’s night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I’ve got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.

- Ron Padgett

 

Via Pei, who is a magical piece of woman. We had many an afternoon under lowcast lights on Breko’s sofas, toying with her french plait, the appearance of a demure schoolgirl, still waters running deep. And there was our first proper chat while walking from Newton MRT station– she had these wine coloured nails and I was telling her how the world seemed unhinged now that I’d crossed a certain line. 17, 17! A milestone year. I think when we were 19 we went lingerie shopping and I was momentarily jealous of Mike. He knows what he’s got.

 

I am exceptionally proud to know you, love. If I weren’t so damn straight you’d have eaten my heart whole.

 

2.30pm I’ve got mangy teeth and not a whit of concentration. Economies are getting de-coupled from the US. The remaining dollars huddle in my current account. The lines on your right palm, if they conspire to form a tiny fish near your life line you’ve got it good even when everyone’s sinking. Turbulent week and I just don’t have the fortitude to get it together, I lost the plot somewhere between conjoint analysis and a random date with a random boy.

 

Ok, off my ass and on with the show.

the sound of settling

“But I’m leaving in like a month.”

“I can manage my feelings.”

“I don’t think you should get so serious about me.”

 

So much for that. I really miss your company, actually. Your terrible dry jokes about Seoul’s awesomely clean streets and Lee Hyori at some water theme park and how you never get fined for throwing cigarette butts. 

 

Come online dammit.

 

That makes two people I’m waiting for to log onto MSN Messenger.

 

Enough cryptic emo posts. The next one will be worth your while.

resolution

I said I have two years to become a woman, to place my hand on your chest and make promises I can actually keep. I have no idea if you’ll still be where I think I’ll find you, or if you’ll inhabit this name, this smile, this voice that’s already speckled with static and rusting memory. Lust and ambition, as bodysnatchers they’ve never settled and perhaps they won’t start with you.

 

I left Korea and never told you what I thought of you; I had nothing to offer, I was just a child taking up your bed. The words would have hovered, anomaly in the air, mute advertisement for a missing person.

 

Less and less that matters. It was sufficient to have had the evening when I thought, I could stop here and be happy and then realized what a selfish notion it was, my indolent desire for the security by your side, ignoring the elements that would make your life what you wanted. It was enough to realize I’d already been a small animal in a hole under a rock, dozing into a soft and vulnerable bundle for the two years that Andrew protected me.

 

Maybe I’ve met someone new, and maybe I haven’t, I’m not so hasty with my assumptions now and I know you’d approve, you with your flagging hands that kept me in line. It’s ok. I don’t need to be rash, only honest.

 

At 17 I knew hunger and the invincibility of youth, had these rules for a destined future, woke at 6.20am and didn’t hesitate to run through the bell, drew like a fiend and cried when my paintings were not what I wanted, tore apart poems and put together my raving love for them in loopy cursive essays. I’m terribly out of shape and my mind is a pond skipper, there’s a glass wall to scale to get where I want but hell I’ll do it, better than I ever have.

 

There’s no point being aloof or snobby. No one is any better than anyone else. Going by the flipside, there’s no way I should let my high regard for anyone intimidate me.

 

I only need one vice at a time. Don’t think my wallet or waistline would like it, anyway. 

 

I won’t stop walking. Won’t stop seeing, sniffing, and getting seduced by everything this year’s got to offer.

 

Ironically, for me, I should dream less. Lower my wheels, get my flight grounded. It doesn’t mean I should dream any less vibrantly. The past as a departure point, houndstooth and flower prints to grow this patchwork with.

 

I’ll do this for myself, not merely for the imagined safehaven of these peeling memories.

It gets me in the middle of the night

When I was still in Korea, Chris K and I had a little chat about how debilitating it is to get hung up over someone– they break your heart, your normal life breaks down. So for the sake of his business and my academic and personal plans, we both mused aloud that it’d be better not to pursue anyone. 

 

Of course he’s blasted the no-dating plan to smithereens and started seeing somebody. Not that I didn’t see it coming. I couldn’t say I knew him well enough, but he had a spot beside him that was asking to be filled. I have no doubt he’s a wonderful date and all the gladder having a girl to fancy. I make my mind up fast and he was an exemplary person, one month of friendship or otherwise.

 

The DFS that was closed, the Han River we circumvented because of the intrusive heat, the songs I couldn’t find on YouTube, the buffets we didn’t savour, the phonecall whose line I cut abruptly. When I go back, let’s do it right, my friend.

 

I’m fighting the urge to dial my affection to the boy who’s only going to hold me by the edges. The phone remains on its hook; good. The past sits in its display case, inanimate, benign. Stay that way. I don’t need old glories tonight.

 

I don’t want to use anybody, I don’t want to impose. I don’t want to engineer anything, unless I look at you and clarity dashes open my senses. Chance, circumstance, gravity. I’ve got a craving but this apple’s gonna fall, I’m not going to pluck it.

Keep on moving.

Doing the usual pervert routine. “I don’t have a chance in hell!” 

“You think that matters? The little tomato was no different or better than the other tomatoes, but I said, HELL, this one I like!”

“You mean I am like all the tomatoes?!”

“You my darling are a cuttlefish. Moving and grooving amongst the vegetables.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“But this one I like.”