first

Did she ever see it coming? 30 years and counting. Should she still count?

She sold Malay kuih in a school. For the past 10 years now. She loved kuih. Sometimes, she thought, a little bit too much. The lovely layers in Kuih Lapis, colourful delights which she ate lapis by lapis, her tongue deftly a colour brighter than the last. She loved the green soft layer of the Putri Salat and would secretly try and discard the harder bottom layer of pulut. Now as an adult, she ate the two layers together, it was…palatable.

She didn’t particular love the school kids. They were okay, she thought. At least they like my kuih. But she loved her children. Her boy used to be so naughty, now he is a respectable young man. He’s working now, an office boy. He doesn’t get paid much, but she is content that he has turned out okay. She smiles as she remembered the time he sprayed her expensive perfume all around the house, thinking that it was like air freshener. Her girl, now a woman with her own children. Her girl used to be popular with all the boys. She remembered scolding one or two when they dared to call the house.

Those were simpler times. Her children still visit, once or twice a month. But she knows it is not the same now.

Does she still count? Does he still count her? It was a valid question, she thought. She doesn’t know what questions are valid and what aren’t anymore. Not after he brought her home.

Some things happen. And then life is never the same again.

“First wife.”

balloons

Timmy held a gallop of balloons, wild in the wind and straining to be free.

“No, no, no,” he sighed, exasperated. These balloons had a job to do, and he would see to it that they did.

Timmy scrummed his fingers even tighter, and ignored the itch which had appeared, unannounced, on his bulbous red nose.

Balloons always meant a child was about to be happy. And Timmy delighted in being a happiness giver.

Suddenly, a thought bubble appeared, to his astonishment.

“But balloons are forgotten almost as easily as they are received.”

Timmy frowned. Perhaps the happiness had been his, all the while?

Timmy loved balloons.

He watched as one glided away.

“Oh,” he said, secretly smiling.

askance

the flower not bloomed

sits in your hand so quiet

watching and waiting.

don’t be disappointed, you created me

you can’t say you want things to change,

and then go ahead and do the same goddamn thing over and over again.

white

The first time is always the worst.

Like most first times, you are uncertain about the right way to do things. Sure, you’ve read about it on the Internet, they hint about it in the magazines and you have a general idea of how it’s supposed to be, but you never really think about the mechanics of it all.

How far should your finger go down your throat? Will it hurt? Should you use the sink or the shower drain?  Perhaps the toilet bowl for easy cleaning? Should you leave the water running so no one gets suspicious?

You focus on the mechanics because you don’t want to think about everything else. The “how”, the “why” and the “what happens after this”, those questions you banish to the depths of your consciousness. You will deal with the unpleasantries later.

You make a couple of choices. You choose the shower drain and leave the water running. Your finger goes in just enough to induce your gag reflex.

Nothing happens.

You try again. It hurts, just a tad, as if your body is saying, “Are you sure about this? We can always stop and say it never happened.”

You ignore this, you try a few more times and bile starts shooting up like mercury, going the wrong way up your throat. And then there it goes.

It isn’t as unpleasant as you thought. (Though you didn’t expect the whole exercise to bear so little. You chalk it up to inexperience, and make a mental note to do a “before and after” the next time.)

Slowly, you get used to the mechanics. You start putting food into categories of “easy-to-regurgitate” (chocolate, soup) and “only-eat-when-you-can’t-avoid-it” (bread, meat). You eat in your room, alone, where no one will judge you for eating a whole family block of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate by yourself.  Later you secretly marvel at the mass of brown liquid meandering slowly on the bathroom tiles, and feel a strange sense of power at having denied it of its original destiny. (It’s scary when thoughts like these start becoming part of the “normal” repertoire.)

The first time is always the worst, because you so easily forget.

That when you are bent, eyeballing the cracks in the white ceramic, saliva trailing uncontrollably down your chin, feeling the blood in your head and tears in your eyes, you forget.

You forget that you are worthy of anything at all.

what i did not say

sometimes..im embarassed to be this happy. is that absurd?

that love could exist amongst the madness.

that love could exist within the madness.

that love could persist despite the madness.

gelatin

She took two steps forward, not without fear. It was the loneliest time of the day, that period between hustle and before bustle, when the air was thick and people with their glazed eyes looked without really seeing. She held a balloon in her palm. It was red like the gelatin candies of her youth, a red that was one shade brighter than blood. It gave her a tiny bit of happiness to hold this happy, bouncing thing in her hand. She let the happy, bouncing thing go and watched as it danced further away, and went to partake in a secret happiness she could only guess at. She watched till it disappeared, and then she did too.