There needs to be noise, perhaps. I can’t stand silence in the car when I am alone. It’s never silent in my room, there’s always foot traffic out the window, rain, the city. Or that beautiful sound passing cars make; full, curvy, searing, a sound comets would want to borrow. I can’t stay in a kampung, I’ll go crazy. There needs to be something, always something. When I sleep the silence is perfect, but even more perfect with the noise of the fan.

Most of the time he is completely silent, and I’m ashamed to admit every time he is, I fill in the silence with even more noise, noise noise noise in my head. I wonder what he is thinking about, whether he loves me, and how he can love me if he doesn’t talk to me. I try to listen to the sound of our skin rubbing against each other when we hold hands, the sound we make when we kiss. Sometimes I think I hate, it, absolutely HATE how he is so silent, why doesn’t he have anything to say, and why doesn’t he have anything to say to me? Why can’t we be catching our breath on conversation topics, why does he say he loves me when he can’t stand how I need to always be movement, noise?

I think above all, I secretly resent the fact that he has silence in him. That it looks so good on him, and he is happy. He can be completely at peace with all that quiet while it inhabits him and taunts me and my endless search to punctuate a word, an action, with another. Then I think I want him even more, or at least want what he has. I wonder how long it took for him to acquire it, whether he looked for it the way I did when he was younger, whether he can’t stand my inability to stay still because he knows I am just chasing my own tail.

I will never know what he is really thinking. I ask and he says “Nothing.” in the most amazing way. And if that’s true, then I don’t resent him, I envy him.

I will not sleep tonight
until I have written something;
the curse is set in motion.

But then cigarette smoke
sashays out my window
with flair

seizing words
off my lips on their way out,
for company.

They share a private joke
as they glide into the street,
mocking my paper insomnia.

I wonder if it is too late
to go out there and
find them.

A quick one responding to Robert Lee Brewer’s poetry prompt: to write one about marriage.

This is amended from the shaky first draft. I’m still not fully happy with it.

—

Marriage came for my grandmother
the penghulu’s daughter
at 13.
She is the only survivor now
everyday, she calls out to ghosts.

Marriage bumped into my mother
in America.
She took it back home but
It screamed until she ran.

She was 20,
and now I am 21.
Our family friend is further and further away.

I ignore it like high school girls ignored me
at recess.
I know it wants to breathe down my back,
but then I remember that marriage
is a person I choose not to speak to
who wants to crash my party

and so it’s forever parked by the mall
waiting for some guy to call with
directions
on how to find me.

—

*penghulu = village leader

My pen is telling me to stop crying. Come on,

it says. I know you’re crushed. You’re not getting out of here. But even though we’ve been in the same place for 21 years, we still had fun times, right? You and me? We did. You don’t need your passport to travel. These books on your shelves, those journals in your closet, they say we’ve crossed seas. Hell, we’ve crossed stars.

It’s not over yet. Don’t think about putting me away. Here, I’ll make a deal with your fingers. If you hold me, I’ll dance. And they’ll sing. Anywhere you want. They can still sing.

I want my leg to break.

It’s almost like a one night stand. No wait, a planned romance. Or recurring dreams of a planned romance. Except you’re reciting someone else’s words with all your heart to a tune of a million eyes. Yet you know the plot, you know how it will end. Sometimes, you can get away with anything. Everyone here has done this before. So I act before I even act, I move forward like I know exactly what I am doing, right into the light. It makes me want to curl up. But I shout. I shout every night. And I pray that when I’m done, they will clap.

You’re new here.

Yes sir, I am.

Took a good look around yet?

No sir, they haven’t allowed me to take a good look around.

And why haven’t —

They love me.

They do?

I believe that’s why I’m here.

Fair enough.

Besides… or…

Yes?

They love me. That’s what they said. But I haven’t been here long enough sir, long enough to dare raise the possibility that they love themselves more. And want me, to prove it. Does… does that make sense?

Well, I’m in no position to say.

Maybe they do though, that would explain why they haven’t allowed me to open my eyes. To really see where they’ve put me. Maybe they don’t care, or never thought about it to begin with.

I imagine you cry enough without having seen anything.

I believe one day, I’ll stop.

You will. We all did. You’ll see that crying changes nothing.

No. I’ll still be here anyway.

Why, you’re getting the hang of things already.

Today is not a day for exams or elevators. Today feels like a day for dresses. No matter how much of a boy I am, I would like to wear a good dress. Things don’t seem to hurt as much in a dress, not your ego, nor your beauty, your movements, or your words. It is not math. I do not have the figure. But maybe one day, I will, and maybe I will have the ego, and the beauty, the movement, and above all, the words.

I haven’t written poetry in what seems like ages. Not even in my paper journal. I’ve just been swimming in physics, organic chemistry, calculus, biometrics, swimming too deep to feel anything, let alone inspired.

He singles you out, and while he’s struggling to think of something to say, you fidget and carry on small conversations with anyone else in the room. This way, there’ll be more time for the two of you, and a chance for the director to notice any potential chemistry.

Besides, everyone else here scares you, and you think this serves you right for wanting to try out something new, where you aren’t the loudest voice in the room. Just a plain girl. You finish off yet another introduction, thinking that if this room had the last oxygen supply in the world, it would be finished in fifteen minutes without any amazing things said. Most of the oxygen might be used on sobbing alone, since it is a theatre crowd.

“Is this your first audition?”
He’s finally decided to say something.

“Yeah. You found the audition virgin.” Lame.

“I could tell… I go to auditions all the time and I’ve never seen you before.”

“Do you actually get any roles?”

“Sure.” He continues at length about his most recent character, inspiring you to kick yourself & check if your gaydar has malfunctioned. “But I’m so tired of playing gay men.”

“Oh. Because… you’re not?”

“No. They’re a hit with the crowd though aren’t they. Always gets their attention. But it would be nice to play alongside a girl for a change. But I know the director, he mentioned he’d put me into callbacks to test me out with other guys he has in mind. I guess he’s auditioning me for a gay couple.”

“He called me too. At the first audition he already told me he’s bent on making me play a lesbian.”

“How many couples are there supposed to be in this play anyway?”

“Quite a lot. But the rest are straight ones, I think.”

“Oh.”

You’re both on the table, and you dangle your legs to cut through the silence. He dangles his legs. He doesn’t need to look to know that you’re scoping the rest of the room as well.

“I wonder who I’ll get paired up with.”

“Me too.”

You both give up cutting through the silence. It’s comfortable. He closes his eyes, still hanging onto your last syllable. You don’t want to scope anyone else. You turn the spotlight off.

The director is in the next room.

It has glass walls, but he doesn’t notice the table at all.

for rocket

.

That man I saw at the bus stop doesn’t bother me anymore. I only saw him once and I never saw him again. I didn’t tell anyone about him, but I called my mother, because he scared me that much. We never talked, he didn’t even look my way for more than a few seconds. But he terrified me. Not in a horrorshow way, but more like something out of a Hollywood romantic drama.

In fact, I felt reduced to a prototype of a character surrounded in orchestral strings, in a movie that flunked at box office opening.

He was blushing, looking cute. Posture at the ready, he was dressed right for my character. I (characteristically) looked like a walking corpse with haggard updo, right after the menial errand the script demanded I do in order to bump into him like this, a man with a bag, coming and heading for nowhere. But he (characteristically) didn’t seem to care, also caught offguard. A small smile, a handful of frames per second, that perfect slow motion where the sun made him look like a hero. We’re moving in time with the script, but its unscripted, so I get scared.

His shy eyes met mine for a few seconds, then away, as if to say “Oh man, are we in this scene?” Then mine interrupted “No, I can’t be in this movie right now,” and I walked right off set, into my car and drove home. I’m glad I never saw him again, glad I never talked about it after that day.

But of course, as I drove away, I turned around one last time. He was hailing a cab.
He waved. I waved back.

We were always fine without each other.