Elusive Thoughts (They Have Never Been Clearer)

You wrote me a song, Closure, back in 2013
and only told me this year that it was written for me

I listened to the lyrics with such intensity-

you said, "I deserve better" now don't give me that crap

we're like broken glass that can't be fixed though I keep all the broken pieces

help me move on

I remember how you always lick your lips
before kissing me
that night when you kissed me so many times until
we couldn't stop laughing
I wanted to tell you my lips felt like the bark of a tree and you were the woodpecker
now I wonder how many girls you have done the same with

It is nice knowing that you wanted to see me tonight, and the other night 

she told me that you said,

"I actually kinda really want to see Rachel" 

I'm calculative but every time you put out a line like this 

I still bite that shit and swallow it down 

you still win

Perhaps it was
the incessant need for you to feel needed
my desperate desire to be loved by you
it all came apart again with old words
multiplied with age
half-truths don't sound as good anymore

Fragments Of You That Haven't Left

I've always hated on your stupid
Mont Blanc Legend
boys at zouk always smell like that
but now I catch a whiff of you on the MRT,
on that boy that tried to talk to me in between drunk kisses at zouk,
and I brush it off like it's nothing
I whisper and roll my eyes,
"stupid douchebag of a cologne"
as if that was a
perfect explanation of why
you would do what you did to me.
(I'm always trying to find you in them)

I've always mocked your annoying
flirting and god damn it, your winks.
and never understood why those
innocent conceited convent girls
fall for your cheap words so effortlessly
perhaps
they were sweet enough
to move boulders - not mountains, in their feeble hearts.

But now after having her send messages-
cringe-worthy, lousy attempts of sticking adjectives and lies into sentences,
I recall your cheap words
and realised that
perhaps
they were really
sweet enough
smooth enough
and caused ripples - not waves, in my tired heart.
(I'm always trying to find you in them)

And like a fish in the ocean
hungry and greedy for food,
I caught onto your tasteful words like fish bait and
was hopelessly hooked onto it
I could not let go to let myself swim freely once again nor
to have a small bite of the other
small, bland, pathetic fish bait next to me.

I've always despised the way you give false hope
your insincerity
your deceitful words
how I used to hold onto them
so tightly
as though believing in those lies harder would actually
have you fucking do it.

But now after getting acquainted with strangers that know
nothing about me but
wanting to know something about me
wanting to get something from me,
I've had my fair share of making empty promises and reciprocating
"I miss you"s and "you're so cute"s without feeling
a single tremor in my broken heart,
without feeling
a single flutter of wings from the butterflies that were supposed to be trapped in my stomach
perhaps they were too tired from all the fluttering around
when I was with you.
Through my emotionless, disinterested words,
I found a little bit of you that I hate
in me.

Seventeen And You've Grown.

five & one.

you were pulling and tugging

my hair like my temper

was short 

you were always cutting it close 

with your carelessness 

with my impatience 

you are still my little brother. 

eighteen & fourteen.

your voice changed

I was away from home and had my heart broken

you would think now that you could swing your arms around me- 

I'd treat you like your age

Now when I try to recall 

it's almost like trying to rewind an old cassette video tape recording 

staring hard at the tv screen 

with occasional fuzzy black and white lines in between snippets of our bickering,

our laughter muffled by scratchy sounds from 

everything falling apart,

"you were never there" 

"you were never home"

you are still my little brother. 

twenty one & seventeen. 

we have slaved ourselves to vices 

sticking to the sibling code of conduct:

diss but never tattle

last night like a deer caught in headlights,

she found out.

we had this conversation that I never thought I would have with someone 

only seventeen

someone that is in the same plight. 

I didn't shower and you didn't fall asleep,

even though I smelled like steamboat and cigarettes and you had work the next day. 

I remember looking at you,

finding it hard recognising sadness in your eyes-

they were always either emotionless or excited. 

It was never emotional with you 

restrictive, bounded and built like a man.

last night felt like we were tearing at the seams

I told you with nothing but conviction,

"you have such capacity to say these words that you said at 

only seventeen, 

that I could never have done when I was seventeen." 

I could have never done the same.

Have you ever felt respect for your younger sibling? 

It's a bit weird because they were always

bratty, childish and sometimes almost stupid. 

Last night's conversation was something that kept playing at the back of my head when I was trying to fall asleep 

while trying to be an older sister

I have come to realise

you are still my little brother, 

but

boy, have you grown up. 

Rain and Heart Aches

when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it



people go
but how they left
always stays

- Rupi Kaur 

Like The Breeze, The Thoughts Of You Come To Me

Today, while crossing the road, I noticed a young girl probably in her first year of secondary school, dressed in a skirt way below knee length and socks perfectly above her ankles. She was walking towards the train station with her grandfather, who had the typical friendly ah gong face and was holding her violin while she carried a stack of folders in her arms. He probably went to pick her up from school, I thought to myself.  And just for a moment, my thoughts went back to my grandfather.

Many times, when popo and I talk about gong gong, it was always about the way he used to spoil me when I was a kid by buying me ice cream before dinner. His bad temper. His sickness. His failure as a father. 

Sometimes, if I try to think hard enough, I'll recall the letter I wrote him with tear stains smudging the ink off the lines on my foolscap paper, begging him to come visit me in my dreams. That letter I wrote to him and left it on his coffin when everyone else left him flowers. The angels will translate my English into hokkien right? I was fourteen years old. 

I will also vividly remember the hot afternoons he used to come down to my place and visit me with a whole box of paus, and longans - if I was lucky enough. And that one sweltering afternoon I wanted to pump air into my bike tyres but we couldn't find a nearby bicycle shop so we he pushed my bike around the whole Joo Chiat area, under the hot sun and never once did he complain that he was too tired. 

From time to time, I'll miss you. And at that split second when I was crossing the road, watching granddaughter and grandfather, I remembered you. The rings on your fingers. Your strong scent. Your pack of cigarettes. Sometimes, a soft whisper of your voice would resound in my head. 

It's been 6 years and death works in a funny way, we talk about the dead as a weak attempt to try to keep them alive. Your stories were never great; they were always about the mistakes you made or how the richer siblings took advantage of your kindness. But they were stories of you after all. 

Popo once told me, "your gong gong never knew the right ways to show his love for his family. But somehow with you, he did it right. He loved you the most, you should know that." 

Some days more than the others, I wonder how it would be like if you could see me now. Would you still love me the same? I would still have your weekly visits and hot steaming paus to look forward to, and probably better conversations with you. 

"You don't ever go back to the same person that hurt you in the first place."

: I don't know what I want out of this.

: You're just hoping that she would fight for you.

: Maybe.

: But you know something? She won't.

: She didn't.

Twenty One

If I thought back on the year I turned seventeen, it was about moving to Melbourne and you. 

If I thought back on the year I turned eighteen, it was about moving on from you and picking up pieces.

And now, thinking about how I would like to think back on the year I turn twenty one, I want it to be filled of happy memories - with and without you. It is going to be big year of changes and uncertainty, and not for a second do I want to cloud it up with mixed up emotions and thoughts of you anymore. I'm done with poking and digging at a wound that was supposed to be long healed for the last one month.

As much as I hate to admit it - like how I can't bring myself to accept all the words my friends have been throwing at me (but it is only the truth of it all), I think I will still sit down and look at the night sky plagued with stars (or lack thereof) and have the sound of your voice right by my ear, telling me that if I look hard enough, more stars will start to appear. And I'll close my eyes, laugh a bit and shake my head as if that will get rid of your voice playing in my head, and tell myself like how I told you, "if there are no stars up there, no matter how hard you stare, it's not going to appear. You're probably hallucinating."

If I were to ever move on, talk to other people and perhaps, find that they are genuinely good people - I will still try to find you like how we tried so hard to find "Virgo" on your stargazing app every time we looked up at the night sky, and it will be like how it was every time we tried to do so -

nothing.

This is my last post and this is me leaving everything - every thought, every feeling, every concern and every last bit of you lingering in my heart, mind and soul. 

I'm Always Tired But Never Of You

Caution tape around my heart
You ever wonder what we could have been?
You said you wouldn't and you fucking did
Lie to me, lie with me, get your fucking fix
Now all my drinks and all my feelings are all fucking mixed

Always missing people that I shouldn't be missing
Sometimes you gotta burn some bridges just to create some distance I know that
I control my thoughts and I should stop reminiscing
But I learned from my dad that it's good to have feelings
When love and trust are gone
I guess this is moving on
Everyone I do right does me wrong

Do you miss me like I miss you?
Fucked around and got attached to you
Friends can break your heart too
If I pulled a you on you, you wouldn't like that shit
I put this reel out, but you wouldn't bite that shit
I type a text but then I nevermind that shit
I got these feelings but you never mind that shit



 

If you wanted me you would just say so

And if I were you, I would never let me go