Kingdom

I’m walking home. The night sky mirrors my insides. Something is growing, living, breathing. My stomach bloats trying to keep it in. I’m walking like a pregnant lady. And you know how much I despise the thought of being pregnant.

But there’s something in the air tonight. Something that forces the little growing embryo of foreboding that I managed to push under my liver to spring to life and grow to the foetus it’s become.

It’s something about the way the water collects around the little bumps of the road. It’s something about the way the leaves above fill in dark spaces in the open sky. It’s something about the way my heart is thumping so hard, I feel like one of those love-sick looney tunes.

You know I love you right? God damn it, I love you. But I can’t stand the way you make me feel. It’s so real. It’s so grounded, it’s so painful and solid. My love for you is like a giant person. Like a great, big thug of a man. I hate that. Fuck, I hate that. I never wanted to love anyone like that.

I always wanted someone who made me feel surreal. Someone who made me feel like the mystical being I always thought I was. Someone who made me know that I was meant for more than this. Someone who made me feel more than human. I never wanted to be human.
I can’t stand this feeling any longer. The foetus inside, it’s kicking. Violently. I want to regurgitate it out. But it’s too big this time. I know tonight’s the night. I stare at the sky. That big, endless sky that calls out to me. It’s like my name is written all over the little wisps of invisible air that float around me and above me and through my legs.

I’m shaking. I’m shaking. I wish you could see this. See who I am. I wish you could lay my body on an operating table and cut me open. You’d see that under my human organs and my human blood; under my human bones, I’m full of colours and words and flying fish. I’m full of darkness and black holes. I’m a dark alleyway inside, I’m a Wonderland.

There are so many times when I wish you could do that. See everything inside; the hidden foetus under my liver. Take it into your arms and curl yourself up in the space between my stomach and my lungs and stitch me back up. But I know you’d only weigh me down. You’d hold me stead fast to the ground like an anchor around my ankles.

I need someone who will be my helium. I need someone who will allow me to float up into the clouds and find my way to the world in which I belong.

My bulging stomach hurts my back. I see a puddle before me. I can see the street light’s reflection in the water. But as I approach it and look down, all I see is the wet pavement through the clear water. It fills me with so much feeling. My body is exploding; I can’t contain all of this. My pores can’t sweat it out. Tonight, it’s too much.

I breathe out.
I am calm. I’m not panicking. I know my time has come.
I lie down on the moist grass. I close my eyes.



And I see you. I see you see me. I see you approach my tall gates and climb over them. I see you dive into my moat and swim across it. I see you climb onto dry land and stare at my castle walls and scale them.

You jump. You break through the thin film of their world and mine. I see how it rips at your skin and turns you inside out. I see your flesh, raw and red and devoid of blood. I see your eyes hang in their sockets with no lids to keep them in. I see your teeth wide and white with no lips to conceal them. I see your face. You’re so handsome. And as your flesh falls away, I see your skeleton and I see your heart beat behind your ribs. Your heart full of helium, your bones light as oxygen.

I open my eyes and you’re beside me. You lie down and I take your hand. I knew that you would come.

Welcome to my Kingdom.

Disappearing Act

You were my only.
My hero. My reason.

But then you disappeared.
All you left was a shell

Empty of life, devoid of love
The outer crust of your heart.

And as I stepped inside
And searched for your presence

All I found was a lingering of your scent.
I moved around each ventricle

Each artery, each vein.
I stepped over blood vessels

Each pumping weakly,
Their purpose no longer clear.

I couldn’t find you here.

And as I began to panic,
As I began to fall apart,

As I fell down, helpless-
I found a trace.

A footprint from the past,
A strand of memory.

And so,
I followed the steps

Till I reached the start
And found a picture of your face.

I have never stopped searching
Hoping still to find you

But, inside I know.
I know you’ve left this place

And taken your love with you.

The Superman in Me

How do I describe you?

You are beautiful.

When you would walk towards me every morning, I wanted to exist in that moment forever. The moment suspended between the long wait for your arrival and the seconds before you were sitting by my side with your scent enveloping me.
Do you remember how we were before? We were like two islands colliding and losing themselves amongst the tangled brambles and lost wilderness of the other. We were like the Bermuda Triangle. For days, weeks, months- they couldn’t find us. We were gone. High above them, we rolled in each other’s arms and never once looked down at the steep drop below.

I used to believe that all I needed to survive was the watermelon scent of your skin, the pinkness of your mouth and the happiness of your laugh.
I used to believe that you were my reason for birth, existence. I was invincible by your side, do you know? The way they say in the movies and the books. The way you never understand until you’re stripped of each layer and you’re lying side by side with the core of another person and suddenly you’re completely naked, exposed, and at the same time, you are more powerful than all the evils of the world.
That’s how you made me feel.

Like Superman.

But your love made me greedy. The way a rabid animal might want human blood after the initial bite. I wanted so much; I don’t think you had it in you to supply the unending desire that began to take over me, that began to spread through me on the underside of my skin. It spewed out my pores and ached for you, it beckoned you to me. I soaked up each drop. I think I left you dry.

I began to want for your smile to belong to me and only me. No one else should control your emotions, not like I could. I began to wish that you would give up your world to enter mine, or at least create a new one with me. We would be the co-founders, we would be the Presidents, the Emperors, the King and Queen. We would be God and Goddess. Indestructible, invincible. I would be Superman. And you could be Wonder Woman.

But I guess it doesn’t work that way.

If you take too much from the Garden of Eden, you’re left with Pandora’s Box. Or like me, you’re left with nothing at all. With my hunger for you, I drove you to lose your appetite. The flesh of me fell off of you. It wasn’t long before you were emaciated.

I look upon you now, a skeleton- devoid of the love, care, need, desire, happiness I used to plump you up. A scarecrow of our former-ness. And now, the hunger in me for you burns ever on. But I don’t say anything, I don’t cup my hands together and fall on my knees to beg you for a morsel of what I desire. You must think I’ve moved on.
But I haven’t.

You are beautiful.

Sometimes, I don’t know what to do. I want to hold you and laugh with you.
Sometimes I wonder, how can you have changed so much and I still be the same? How can I still need you so desperately and you be so free of me? I look down at me and all the walls are gone. I’m a stump, a legless, armless corpse of who I was before you came. I think back to when my core and your core lay side by side and dared the world to touch us. It was so long ago.

I don’t feel like Superman.
But as I fall off this building, my silent scream bouncing off these city walls, I wish for you to be the one to catch me.

Footsteps

You were strange.

I didn’t know you. I grew up fascinated by you almost. The way a child is fascinated by the glistening trail of slime that a snail leaves behind. With apprehensive curiosity. Or maybe the way a dog is fascinated by a burning fire cracker spinning on the ground. With fearful longing.

Your skin was speckled and dotted with grey spots. You didn’t even have to have your arms hanging by your side for them to be covered with raised veins.

Did you know, sometimes when you slept, I used to sneak into your room and touch your skin. My tiny heart would be thumping in my throat, my eyes would be wide like the golf balls. I would tip toe in by myself, none of the others dared join me, I would fix my eyes on you and approach. You weren’t even peaceful in your sleep. Heavy, laborious breathing. It almost rivalled the steady drone of the AC.
I’d walk up to you and touch the veins on your arms, pressing them down gently and watching them rise back up. Your skin was so soft. I didn’t understand how it was so soft when it looked so scaly.

Sometimes when I looked at you I felt like crying. You were so lonely, I knew. My parents, my cousin’s parents – your children – were always trying to make you happy. They brought you your favourite foods and they talked to you about their lives and they brought old friends to visit you. But even though you smiled politely back, your eyes were still heavy and full.

I wonder if you remembered me. All those grandchildren running everywhere, how could you know the difference? But I always felt connected to you.

Shall I tell you what I had wanted? Your liquid eyes were always so sad, their colour lightening over time. I wanted to hug you. To poke you and see if you’d react to me and say, ‘You are my favourite grandchild’ and have your eyes fill up with happiness and colour as you gathered me in your arms.

Did you know that?
I think you did.

My mum told me you were so quiet because you missed grandmother. Is that true? I suppose it must be. It must be her you carried in your eyes, and her in your plodding footsteps, and her in your puffs of breath.

Yesterday, I divorced my husband. He said he didn’t love me anymore. We’ve been separated for a few months now, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
But I am.

I don’t know why, but it made me think of you.

These past few months, when I’ve been happy – which isn’t a rarity, in general I suppose I’m quite a happy person – I feel like there is a black cloud above my happiness.

And in that black cloud are all the other happy things I could be doing, or would be doing. If maybe he hadn’t moved out, he could be doing this happy thing with me right now. Or I could be somewhere else doing something happy with him. But I’m not. I’m here, and I’m happy, and I’m without him.

That’s strange isn’t it? To feel unhappy about being happy. Or to feel unhappy about something that made you happy.

Did you feel like that too? Did all your memories of grandmother make you feel the way my memories of him make me feel?

All those times we laughed together, danced together, slept together, held each other, cried together- all the things that made me happy- now they crush me. They are like arrows in my body. Every time I touch them, they sear me with needles of pain. But I cannot bear to go through the pain of taking them out, and worse, to stitch the gaping wounds they’ll leave.

The memories are diamond dust in my throat. Slowly killing me with their deceptive beauty.

I miss you.

Do you know?

I miss you very much. I don’t understand how I do since you were only a part of my life for the first six years. I’m 36 now. Thirty years have gone by since I said goodbye to you.

It’s difficult to forget your face that day. It was as if each crevice of a wrinkle on your face hid tiny lead balls that made your skin sag even further. Your movements were heavier than I had ever seen them to be, but something was different, and I knew it. You were heavier- but lighter. Is that possible? Every step you took seemed to be purposeful if not hesitant.

I felt the sadness that came with each look at you diminish somehow, or maybe it was just pushed into a depth that I did not know I had in me. For some reason, I knew you had made up your mind about something and it filled you with a light. A dark light, I think now.

I remembering wanting desperately to see your eyes, but your back was to me.
I followed you furtively, my every step a new espionage film.
I saw you walk into your room, and so I went into the next.

There was a door that connected the two; I pressed my ear to it. There was a scraping of something heavy on the tiled floor. A chair.

My heart began to beat. A steady drum roll, hammering at me from inside out. I worried you’d hear me and stop. Now, sometimes I wish you had.

I’m not sure what compelled me to do it, but I made up my mind quite suddenly and pushed open the door.

I wish I could have seen the shapes in your eyes.

When your figure vanished from the window, I did not wait to hear the ensuing thump as I ran out the door, down the six flights of stairs to you.

My breath became heavy like yours, my each step forward heavy like yours, my eyes turned to mules of burden like yours. I could see you.

A tiny, tangled mass of blood, body and emotion.

I approached you steadily, no one else knew just yet, and my heart rate slowed.
I stopped when I was right beside you- as close as if you were sleeping and I was poking the veins on your arm- and watched you.

I could almost see each memory of her float up from you towards the heavens. I could see you sit on each wisp and ride the strands of thought all the way up to the cloudless, blue, burning hot sky.

Is it odd that for the first time you looked peaceful? Your head wasn’t whole, your body wasn’t straight, your heart wasn’t working. But you were peaceful.


When I was finally satisfied that you were happy, I turned and left. My breath was even, my footsteps were light, my eyes clear.

I stopped before the end and turned to look at you. There you lay, and from you to me there was a trail of footsteps. Tiny feet shaped with your blood. I looked down behind me and saw the last one. Did it make me sad? I’m not sure how I felt anymore.

One day I hope you’ll help me find the freedom that you found.

Monster

Sometimes I feel
As though everything inside is
Alive.

A monster throwing itself
At the wrought iron bars
That make up its cage.

Sometimes I feel that if
You came too close
The monster would pull you in.

He would wrap his claws around
Your body and crush you
To pulp.

Sometimes I want you to
Come near enough
But mostly, I hope you don’t.

Because I know
That after tasting your blood
The monster would crave you more

And once you have been inside
I know you’ll want to run
And hide.

But the monster and I
Will miss you sourly
And so,

I hope you don’t.

The Virus and I

It’s one of the bad nights.

The feeling of unease and trouble has expanded beyond my liver and has spread through the capillaries on the inside of my stomach to the ends of my body. My fingers weigh down on the bed on which I lie like lead bullets. The blood flowing through them is infected and rich with the virus. This unnamed virus.
I wonder what it is.

This germ, this multiplying agent that invades my ostensibly impenetrable, but weak as jelly cells. It enters on the most unexpected, or the most expected, days and nights and begins its quick and efficient siege of my body, mind and being.
I am powerless to stop it.

So, I shut the door. Shut out the people. Lie in the sun, or in the moon, and wallow in my own waste. Wallow in my own mind’s filth and enemies till my chest is heaving and my eyes are dry from staring.

Sometimes I think you could make it go away. But you don’t live inside me, you don’t know the dark dangers that lurk in the crevices and corners of my body. In the hollow by my elbow, or the fold behind my knee. Evils and cruel creatures hide there. They wait impatiently for a chance to travel up my blood to my brain where they set fire to all that stands. They dance in voodoo trances with their eyes burning in anarchy.

I roll to my side and realize that this is my only prison. I do not rattle the bars of my isolation, it’s been too many years. My fingers are callused from holding the freezing metal. Now I stare listlessly out and wait for them to elevate till I can walk freely again.

But tonight is a bad night.

I curl on my side and I’m crying again. I’m not sad. I’m not weak. Sometimes, all the colours of thoughts and feeling build up and the inferno inside releases the darkly coloured, stained fumes till there is no room for my organs to breathe. The only way to let out the colours, the fumes, the toxins is through tears.I selfishly release them. One by one, sometimes many at a time.

The bursting is lessening, the hysterics and theatrics have calmed. Now that the fireworks have shot through the sky and polluted the clarity, the smoke lingers but the storm begins to pass.

Sometimes, I wonder how you’d feel if you saw me like this. I expect your eyes would widen till I could see the whites like neon sticks in the night, and your mouth would open just the slightest. And I expect you’d question your love for me. And what you’d known of me.

But I never really know. Maybe you’d do what I secretly want for you to do if one day you were to stumble upon me in my state of self erosion. Maybe you would rush to me and hold me tight till you almost parted my skin and entered my being. And then collectively, we could fight the virus, the antigen, and smash it down till it disintegrated into the depths of my flesh again. I’d want you to smell the way you do, till your scent was the only air in me to clean out the pollutants and the fog.

Still, I never really know.

And until you find me, which I suppose I hope you don’t, I am left alone to struggle with the consequences of the self destruct button.

If you find me, which I hope you don’t, know that I made the virus. And the virus belched out a part of my soul.

And don’t you love all of my soul?

Welcome to my kingdom. We live here in chaotic harmony, the virus and I. Join us, won’t you?

Introduction

Why do I write?

I guess I write for the same reason art exists.

To make you feel.
It's the most rewarding thing to have someone tell me one of my pieces made them feel. To stir up emotions in another human being through a piece of writing that has nothing to do with them- what a feat! But the only reason they feel is if they find bits of themselves in the writing. Bits of their memory, emotion, past.

And I guess that is good writing. Writing that is human. Emotion that is real.

I hope my writing makes you feel.
Because bits of me are in everything I write.

So, I hope it stirs something in You.