This is my way of talking about something
without talking about it.
Of course when I was still a “young” writer, my psychotic mind would imagine what I would say at my friend’s funeral, my parents’ funeral, my lover’s (if any) funeral, and so on, if I could. Would I be funny? Would it be dramatic? Can I choose different writing styles for different funerals? Will they judge me if whatever I wrote turns out to be lacklustre?
But we don’t get that. Instead, we pray. Even, if you’re not pious and you may have some questions about your relationship with God, you stand with the congregation and pray.
We read Arabic texts most of us don’t really understand to a person who can no longer understand us at all.
We ask forgiveness, and instead of gifts, we ask for people to donate to charity in the name of the deceased.
And typical for any Malay gathering, there is also copious amounts of food. Never has the term “makan hati” been so ironically funny to the bilingual self-proclaimed comedian in my brain, but nothing has ever made my black hole of a stomach feel so finite.
Everything is for the other. Everything is for someone else to feel better. Everything is so that hopefully the deceased gets a boost in good deeds/pahala points to ascertain his/her place in heaven.
At Malay funerals, we disappear, as if the deceased has truly taken away with him/her whatever version of us at the time of death. And we’re all meeting, or maybe confronting, ourselves again for the first time.
This is not a eulogy. This is a prayer - for death to be as beautiful as it is painful for the rest of us still living.
G is for Gay.
Gay as in happy.
Happy as in I don’t know
How to be most of the time,
But remember that night we stayed up looking at numbers before having prata for breakfast?
G is for God I need to sleep.
Sleep as in actually sleep and stop having the same recurring dream that lead me to you.
You know the one that involves waking up just before you get to the good part?
G is for Good.
Good as in that’s my new definition of average because I’m so good and making it look good when I’m not good that telling them that we’re good is the easiest lie to tell.
G is for Great.
Great as in that’s the 10 I’m saving for when the twinkle of your smile becomes just another bone I’ve buried deep in the graveyard of my body.
G is for Glitter.
Glitter as in the kind that sticks to you forever despite you thinking you’ve become a different person.
It’s a pretty thought until you find yourself scrubbing your skin with your fingernails,
Trying to remember how you got here in the first place.
G is for Goatee.
Goatee as in the one I’m trying to keep on my chin so I look like I’m wise enough not to fall for the same slaughterhouse tricks with me holding the knife.
G is for your name.
Your name as in that’s how I’ve always spelled it on my phone ever since, and every time you text me, I go back to the beginning.
G is for Growing up.
Growing up as in learning again and again that things die, and it will be painful, but there is nothing you (I) can do about it.
G is for Grief.
Grief as in that’s how I feel now whenever I hear your name pop up in the conversations about you and I.
G is for Give.
Give as in I can’t anymore.
G is for Goodbye.
Goodbye as in I don’t want to, but will if I have to.
Dear person with body issues, I see you.
I see you picking on your skin, wondering why the constellations on your body do not look as beautiful as the ones in the night sky. I see you watching your friends eat while you sip on water. I see you thinking about cake. I see you wince when someone makes a fat person joke – or a skinny person one, and wonder if this is going to be the day you fight. I see you decide not to fight. I see you choke down your anger like you choke down your appetite. I see you pretend to laugh about it. I see you imagining your waistline reducing to a bite-sized conversation on a plate of insecurities – never sufficient, but always more than enough for today. I see you shrinking yourself into nods and shakes because your voice is too tired to speak. I see the sugar crumble in your eyes when someone tears into your body issues like it’s soluble if the coffee is hot and stirred. I see you uncomfortable for always sweating too much like your insides are hot and stirred. I see you breathe like your lungs are trying to feed the famine in your gut, but can’t. Won’t.
I see you. And you are not alone. And there are teaspoons of people, at least, who will see you for more than your body issues. Hold your crevices and folds, and tell stories of how they will not own this life. How your hands – with fingers too skinny and long, or fat and stumpy – fit just nice in theirs. In mine. We will be just enough size and body for each other. Take just enough, and give just enough so that we will finally be satiated.
My body is worth a McDonald’s meal
I look good in pictures
Even though you know I mean trouble later on
But I am cheap, I’m fast,
I have no strings attached,
And I’m always just around the corner
Ready for you to take me into your hands
Whenever you feel famished
I can get a little messy if you’re not careful,
But you know you’ll be lovin’ it
The minute your lips touch my buns
You don’t have to worry about getting caught
Because you never have to stay for more than
One, maybe two hours tops
I will dress myself in anything you’d like,
Just to keep things interesting
Even though I’m really just the same
Kind of poison
Packaged a different way
I can be your “fuck my diet”
Cheat meal for when you really just
Need to take it out on your hips
And I will never judge you for it
I’m easy to dispose off when you’re done
All you have to do is wrap me up,
Crumple me, stuff me in a bag,
And dump me in the rubbish chute,
The hotel waste bin,
In the alleyway
Where no one will find me
And no
You don’t have to ask about my scars
Nor do you have to pretend to love me
I will still welcome you with a smile
And thank you for stopping by
You are like a typhoon,
a tsunami,
an atom bomb.
You came and left in a blink of an eye,
But years from now, they will still
talk about how you destroyed
the house of a boy
How he would sit on the porch
The flash floods of memories washing away his resolve,
Consuming his body
This body
That still shivers awake
at 3 in the morning
Knees tucked and backbone curved
Into fetal position
Ears pressing against an imagined womb
Pregnant with what ifs and should I haves
Searching for the silence in this storm
Praying for some respite
From the daunting of your valleys
From the howling of your deep sea
From the burst of your sun
When will you let me go?
When will your koi fish tattoo
stop swimming into my wreckage
Luring me into the abyss
Like an ocean burial
There is no bigger lesson here
There is no happy ending or moral
Just a sailboat, a house,
Broken and lost in the open
Waving goodbye to the wind
When he tells you to take it easy,
Tell him – taking is always easy
It’s giving that’s hard
When he tells you to get a grip
Tell him – I do, every night before I drown
Myself in my anxieties
Sometimes I grip my sides so hard,
As if to save an already sinking ship
When he tells you to be happy
Tell him – sure, I guess I should
Want to be happy but it just seems harder for me
When he tells you, you make him feel bad
Tell him – I’m sorry, I never wanted to hurt you
I didn’t mean to show you my scars
Like a collection of stamps
When he tells you, you are too emotional,
Tell him – I’m sorry
I tried washing the stains of your kisses
With the tongues of roving vultures,
But it’s hard not to feel nostalgic
For the way you make me feel when you smile
Or maybe
Tell him the truth
Tell him he is the first man
In a long time to make you feel safe
Tell him you never wanted to
But you think you’re falling in love
Tell him you miss him
Tell him you don’t know how to play games
But you are really good at cheering him on
Tell him your only regret that night
Was not holding his hand while you sleep
Tell him every time Facebook notifies you that
He is nearby
You spend half an hour deciding
If you should bother him with your very existence
Tell him even though accidents happen
There is none that excites you more than meeting him
Tell him, if he has to leave
To keep the piece of you he has stolen
Tell him, thank you for making life
Feel a little bit easier
Even if it’s just for a little while
Trauma is a slippery slope
It makes your knees buckle for no reason
Forcing you to grit your teeth and
Let the ground beneath you
Cut your body in places you
May have forgotten over the years
Trauma is a slippery slope
It makes your body shake and shiver
At a touch of a hand
Or the graze of a finger
After awhile it becomes a puzzle to
Separate the quivering of desire
From the trembling of fear
Both equally familiar
Trauma pushes you
Down the rabbit hole
A ticking time bomb that’s always silent until
It’s too late
Last night trauma exploded along the highway
In the middle of the night
A quiet moment with a kind hand
In one fell swoop
Trauma erupted from a deep seeded longing
The feeling of wanting to ride
The same roller coaster again and again
Even though it always makes you feel like puking
You can’t tell if it’s still fun anymore
Or you just like regurgitating
Trauma is a profile
It is equating all feelings of love and joy
With an act you choose to keep as a bedside story
Of the thing that goes bump in the night
That hides not in your closet or under your bed
But lies underneath your pillow
Cooing you to sleep
Telling you if no one else is there tomorrow,
It will be