Monday, 2 Jun 08
Engaged
Welcoming a new sister into the family :)
Our family gets bigger all the time!
*love*
I’m glad it’s you!!
Monday, 26 May 08
Relation(ships)
It’s easy to love someone when everything’s sunshine and happiness.
The true test of love comes in times of grief and anger, hurt and pain. The strength of a ship cannot be proven until it has sailed through every storm and come out whole on the other side.
Can your love weather all storms? Will you come out stronger on the other side?
If you can’t, maybe you should let the other person go. There really isn’t any point hanging onto someone when you rip each other apart all the time, when you both fall apart in the lightest drizzle.
But if your love just grows stronger with every passing trial, you know how much you’ve been blessed to find that someone with whom you can endure all things, if only that person is by your side.
How blessed I am.
Saturday, 17 May 08
Love lost
i.
I sleep with a salamander on my pillow, the Queen said as she stared out the window at nothing in particular. It licks up the tears that fall as I weep at night. One day it will die from all the bitter sorrow it has drunk, but until then it will continue to eat my tears, that I may not drown in them as I sleep. A tear rolled down her cheek. So quickly that I thought I might have been dreaming, a lizard ran up her shoulder and shot out its little pink tongue and touched it to the tear. The Queen smiled sadly and caressed the lizard. It is my dearest companion, but for my cause it dies a little more each day. Another tear fell, and another, and the salamander drank them all. Just as I die a little more each day, without my King beside me.
ii.
Her friends would later remark that when she heard the news, she had gone very white - which was to be expected - but then she repeated the names of those who were lost over and over again, as if to be sure she had gotten their names right. My brothers? she asked, her face bloodless. My sister? The professor…and Aunt Polly? These? And then she asked the strangest question of all, to nobody at all - but, she asked, what about me?
The next day she rushed back to the old professor’s house - only a cottage, now, after he had lost his fortune. She broke in through an unlatched window, found the wardrobe in the bedroom. She crawled in, leaving the door open just a crack; her chest began to heave in dry sobs as she remembered her sister’s voice, young and full of childish enthusiasm - “Don’t shut the door all the way, Susan, it’s silly to shut yourself in a wardrobe.” But the back of the wardrobe was a solid wall of wood, and no matter how she pounded the wall, and wept, and shouted, and begged, it remained nothing more than a panel of wood - unyielding, unmoving, unforgiving. And after that there was nothing for it but to take the train back for the funerals, although all the way back she wished hard through her endless tears that she, too, would be taken in a train crash.
But it did not happen.
iii.
The heady rush of the first flush of love is quickly forgotten as a couple settles into being with each other. They become familiar with each other - too familiar, perhaps, isn’t the saying that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? And the days pass quickly, and the number of them that stretch between now and then can only grow larger. Soon the fire and the passion of the first days is only a memory, and then only a memory of a memory, until one morning you wake up and look at your lover’s face, twisted in sleep. That’s when you wonder what you first loved about him, because you can’t even remember why.
iv.
Everyone remembers Cinders because she got the prince. Nobody remembers me. My chin is too strong for my face, perhaps, and freckles are dusted over my nose, but I was never called ugly until Cindy wrote the history books. Too uppity to do some chores, and then scolded for it and made to do her part, so she weaves some sob story about being the poor little abused child. Utter rubbish. What did she do to get her prince? Nothing she did herself. Fairy godmother waved her wand, handed everything to her on a silver platter. Blister on her toe from running home barefoot? Well, whoop-de-doo.
I cut off my heel for that prince.
And now my dancing days are over, and I hobble from door to door begging for my bread. Sometimes I see her pass by in that golden carriage, but she’s too grand to wave to us poor folk. Like she can’t remember where she came from! Shows what some people are like.
But I remember that prince, and that ball. I remember his smile. That smile.
Well - that’s all I want before I die, really. A chance to see him smile at me one more time. Just once.
v.
Then he wakes up and smiles and tugs you down to kiss you, his morning breath strong enough to wilt apples. And your heart fills with tired, reluctant love, and you think, this is why.
(But you hope, and you pray, that every morning you’ll be able to remember why you love him, because you’re stuck till death do you part, anyway.)
Tuesday, 6 May 08
Wedding bells
A rash of weddings, he said, but I shook my head vigorously. Not a rash, I insisted, why do you make it sound like a disease? Like something that eats at the skin. It should be a joy of weddings, a revel of weddings. A thrill of weddings, maybe. He laughs at my indignation. Some people might say marriage is a disease, love, no matter what you think of it. He tweaks my nose.
But you don’t, do you, I ask, and only he knows me so well that he can hear the soft imploring note in my voice. He leans down and stares into my eyes, until I blush and smile and fidget just a little bit. It’d be a disease if I marry anyone else, he replies, and I can’t help but laugh until his mouth comes down onto mine and kisses my silly worries away.
(fiction[by]me)
Saturday, 3 May 08
Keep me steady
I dived into love with you.
I stood on the diving board, rough wood, splinters curling up at the edges. My toes were small and white as they gripped the edge of the plank like a dying man grasps at his last breath. I remember looking down and thinking, I don’t have to jump. I can still step back. I could…
And then you smiled and unfurled your arms and I felt my heart kick into life like you had turned an ignition and gunned the engine. You just stood there, with your arms wide open, waiting for me to take that first step.
So I did. I stumbled off the board. It was fear and terror and exhilaration and the best feeling I’d ever had, plummeting like an anvil through the air and wondering if you’d be there when I reached the bottom.
And I plunged into you, the deepest pool I’d ever sunk into. You gathered me up and enfolded me in your arms and never let me go. You take me in, you steady me, you warm me.
You are my lifeline. Love stitches us together like an invisible seam. Our hands fit together, halves of a whole, until I can’t tell where I end and where you begin, wound around each other like the curve of yin and yang.
What if I fall? I’d asked.
I’d catch you, you’d replied simply. I’d catch you.
You did.
Me and my mommy
I pad quietly into my parents’ room. My sister doesn’t have to go to school this week on account of her drama performances this weekend (hearts and luck, baby girl, I’m sorry I can’t make it) so Dad didn’t have to wake up to drive her to school.
This morning, however, it was bucketing down with heavy, heavy rain (why can’t it rain like this on Saturday mornings so that the construction can’t go on and I can get a good sleep in??), and I couldn’t bear to drag myself out of bed, let alone into the rain and to school. So there I was standing next to my parents’ bed, putting on my most woebegone look (useless, though, in the pitch dark).
I tap Daddy’s knee gently. He sits up blearily. “Wuh? Huh? Hanna?”
My pitiful look becomes a bit affronted. “No. It’s ME. Can you send me to school? It’s raining.
He lies back down with a groan. “It’s my only day to sleep innnnnn,” he groans. “But it’s waining,” I moan sadly.
My mother rolls over. “I’ll send you. Let Daddy sleep.”
“Heehee yay!” I bounce and gambol out of the room in delight. Thankfully school is near home and it’ll be a scant 10 minute drive in the rain for Mommy, avoiding a 30 minute struggle on public transport for me. Thank God for loving mothers.
Later, in the car, as we near school, I tell Mommy: “Just drop me at the bus stop, don’t drive me into school. When it’s raining there’s always a long line because a lot of parents drop their kids off.”
She turns to look at me. “Yes, and I’m still a parent dropping my kid off at school, aren’t I?”
I laugh in chagrined amusement as I kiss her cheek, thank her, and get out of the car.
Monday, 31 Mar 08
Israel graffiti
I saw this written on a blue steel door in Israel, back in 2005. I thought it was funnily crazily emo and strangely out of place in the Holy Land, and thus it struck a chord in me. How could I not snap a photo?
I’m posting this now because I remembered and mentioned it to Puppy on Sunday, and because now I can proudly say that I’ve found my life’s love :)
Sunday, 30 Mar 08
Cuddle-pop chicken
The fulfillment of love can be so simple sometimes.
It’s hard to explain. But the smallest of things can keep one terribly happy.
Weirdo :)
Sunday, 23 Mar 08
Do you know?
As I walk down the corridor, my nose wrinkles faintly. The smell is antiseptic, violently clean, with an undercurrent of old age. It’s the scent of grandparents lying in beds, waiting for their turn to die. Eau de hospice. Eau de old. The smell of impending death.
Just the day before, the old lady in the room next door had passed; already a new patient has taken her place. The occupants change constantly, as do the stream of visitors, but we all look the same, wearing an exhausted air of finality, of dogged patience. Everyday, there is someone quietly weeping in the corridors. Their shoulders shake. The plants on the window sills are daily watered with sorrow. All the other visitors avert their eyes and file into their respective rooms silently. There’s no need to say anything - tomorrow, it will be someone else sobbing at the window. It could well be me; it could be you. Everyone takes their turn to cry. Everyone takes their turn to die.
The nurses are kind. They know their patients only leave this place for one reason, that their visitors have all but given up hope by this time. It’s an interminable wait. It’s wondering if, when the time comes, you’ll make it in time to catch their last breath, before it sails up like a prayer into the sky. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody acknowledges - we know death lurks in the corridors, painted an insipid pale pink and scented with Dettol. Every occupant waits their turn. It will come.
I linger hesitantly by the doorway. I’m surprised to see that there’s no one else there. For the first time since he fell sick, I’m alone with him. I’m not sure if I should go in without anyone else with me, even if it is my own grandfather lying quiet underneath the scratchy wool blanket. I venture into the room and look down at his face. His eyes are closed. His mouth hangs slackly open, and his breathing comes so slowly and lightly that I have to place my hand on his chest just to make sure it’s moving. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s there, and I find myself breathing more heavily than usual, as if trying to breathe for him.
It’s quiet. I look at him, and it’s evident that he’s already got one foot in another world. It won’t be long before the nurses will be able to assign this room to someone else, come to wait his turn to die. It breaks my heart. It’s a struggle not to cry - it will be a blessing, it will be relief, I repeat woodenly to myself. He will be free, he will be with God. He won’t be here. It will be a blessing.
I lean over and touch my lips lightly to his cheek, then move to whisper in his ear.
I love you, I say in Cantonese. I’ve never said it to him before. I figure if not now, I’ll never get the chance, and I’m too shy to say it when there are others there. I love you. Do you know that? I repeat. He probably cannot hear me, when his mind drifts the edges of the world, when he can already see the proverbial light waiting at the end of the tunnel. But I say it anyway. He doesn’t move. I search his face, hoping for a sign that he understood me, but I cannot remember now if delusion and hope make me think that he might have heard.
The tears begin to fall. Today, it is my turn to cry, while I await his turn to die.
I don’t know if he heard me.
JADEITE