strung

between the lightness of air and the tipover to land

she stood unmoving

waiting for the line to still.

her arms spread out in-line

she jumpstarted her memory.

.

the strings were slippery but still she tied them

the line was taut, still she tugged.

one voice adviced her, she ignored

the stubborn fool she was.

..

‘ i love you ‘ she whispered

before she took one tentative step forward,

and plummeted to her death.

second to everyone

i came here hoping i wouldn’t see you

that you wouldn’t see any greatness in me

that i wouldn’t have to flee.

almost

It’s been a few weeks.

I haven’t learnt to talk much.

I’ve found the occasional word.

But I have to learn to speak faster than the damned are catching up.

By night I feel I need to make that call

and then its day and I forget what it felt like

and then its night again.

I let myself go because I cannot not be afraid in just one night, when

I took more than a year to wake up to footsteps.

Observant and sensitive, they call it

its fear.

.

Whoever you are, if you think you can help me, reach me somehow.

in between losing

Yesterday, someone said “If you know yourself, you won’t lose yourself”.

And right away, I questioned its accuracy.

I think, the better we know ourselves, the clearer it becomes when we’re losing who we are.

In the race to please everyone around us, to gain acceptance and approval

It’s easy to lose your identity and take on snippets of what everyone wants us to be.

.

For I touched my heart to feel it pump

but it was cool and slightly taut

and in between the chambers without blood

I’d given up my secret part.

.

Dedicated to all people who are feeling like they’re losing themselves. It may not mean much, but you’re not alone. It’s easy to say, be who you are, and be true to yourself. But what when you’ve run after feet of clay for so long, you’ve forgotten who you are?

For we have all lost

I have lost a schoolmate

but still a name and statistic to many, including me.

He has lost a brother

and they have lost a child.

You have lost a student

The world has lost a math whiz

someone that is now but a could-have-been

We have all lost to the demons of his mind.

We have all lost.

.

For no one can truly know your mind, unless you tell them so. If everything happens for a reason, I would like to tell you that you are my reason. You woke me up to the pain that parents of a child lost to suicide has to live with, the questions that will never fully be answered, and a family that will henceforth be like a jigsaw missing a piece.

take it

when i go where you can’t reach me

you won’t find me anymore

and when you call my name to hold me back

i won’t hear from behind the door

.

i tried for everyone

and yet they creep in further on me

till all i could see were their hands in my face

and i shut them out to breathe

.

as you take your time

to retract your hands

to let me live outside a corner

ill learn to walk

my shining blade

till i hear your voice once more.

darling julee and jaime

when you read this letter, do not go around the house looking for me or mummy.

go to Auntie Fanny next door and tell her tocall the police.

remember to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’

I have gone into the woods, and mummy is still sleeping,

but both of us will never be return home.

For the rest of your days, you may have to move

from home to home

in foster care

and many times, you may not want to live anymore.

But even as you press that penknife blade to your beautiful wrist,

or tip that bottle of pills into your mouth that i used to place your milk bottle to,

remember that we are watching over you.

tell the police that you have no mummy

because she wanted another daddy,

then tell them you have no daddy

because he could not forgive himself.

Love you very much,

Daddy.

.

Dear Daddy & Mummy,

because you said you were watching over us,

you will know that jaime has been raped every night for the last 3 months

and is now also asleep, like mummy.

i helped her.

i am writing this in the woods

with a penknife in each of my wrists

and a bottle of pills to help me sleep soonest.

I have told Auntie Fanny that I am

heading for the woods.

Loved,

Julee

.

The first letter is what I imagined was contained in a letter a man wrote to his two young girls telling them not to panic when they couldn’t find him and his wife. He has earlier killed his wife for returning to her adulterer and he later went into the nearby woods and drilled through a leg and an arm, and died. By no fault of their own, the two girls, names unknown, have been made orphans overnight.

in that eggshell

you make me move, in that shake

my world trembled and i felt like screaming, only my feet were dancing

there was no music, and when i finally dropped dead

beautiful laughter reverberated inside my head

and I reached out for the innocent penknife

put the tip inside, slid it under my skin

and cut smoothly through the flesh.

maybe, then maybe, after i’m done with separating the two,

ill move on to dig inside the red tubes,

to remove life, and let my heart rejoice in its fountain of death

until it finishes its duty.

i ought to have burnt and smelt the fire catch up with me.

under that tanned cracked layer her nerves showed, the white substance that oozed out bit by bit, and yes, she smiled as she squeezed out more. it didn’t hurt.

Madame snail

She stuck out her feelers, her eyes white on black

she looked right then away so she wouldn’t get caught.

Touched by a blade of grass, it fragrance overwhelming

her mind was flooded, almost fully submerged,

she retreated into the empty room

where she knew the living and the pain and feared naught.

.

look away so no one sees the frustration

that makes you want to tear out your guts

merge flesh with windowpanes and snow out your brain.

look back so she knows, you’re trying and crying and dying.

I’m trying, and I don’t think I can push myself any further any faster. But i’ll try harder, again.

photographer no longer humane

And yes, a pick up from ‘cheers’, stereotypes have been proven correct.

Today, I was photographer before I was human, and in that I despise myself that much. In that moment I saw a friend being beaten up by a group of three burly others, in my mind floated the thought – that would make a good picture. I wanted the story.

We were walking along, with me in front of him, when someone called out to him and we both turned. It was a familiar face and they exchanged words before he gestured and mumbled something which I did not catch. I naturally tagged along behind as he was carrying my lens bag with some lenses I could not afford to pay for.

While I stopped at the edge of the market and he went on out into the rain, he was cornered against a lorry by three men, probably twice my weight and a good deal taller than me. There he was, this relatively skinny Malay, surrounded by a group of Indians, and his friend, whom I had photographed the week before as well, standing alongside, looking sheepish.

I caught shreds of the conversation that took place before the first punch was delivered to his face by the bulkiest man and the slightest delivered a mean blow to his abdomen that made him lunge forward head-first into the next parked lorry. At this point in time, the words in the despicable photographer’s mind changed from ‘what’s going on, oh no, he has my lens’ to ‘that must have hurt, i hope my lens are alright’.

the crux of the matter is that I wanted to walk over to speak to them, but common sense told me I would get beaten up if I joined in the jolly fray. The suspicion that the white packet he took out from his pocket contained something akin to drugs and the phrase ‘he’s your friend! (very bad translation from malay)’, convinced me maybe he had done something wrong. And afterwards, I contemplated sending him a message or dropping him a line, and then ‘I’ came before ‘friend’, and I feared being called out as the girl with the huge-ass camera and too-darn-powerful zoom lens hanging around her neck as she witnessed the entire scene.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, he squeezed in a few words, walked back over to me to return me my lens and told me to go. They bundled him up into the lorry and took off and I looked around me to find store owners moving their glance between me and the bundlers.

Will message him tonight. I feel like i chipped off a big corner of my humanity today. How more frightening than the whirlwind of events.