That’s where we found ourselves, one deep and tragically beautiful afternoon;
underneath the Marina Bay Financial Centre, and in the service of too few
profile pics. I was faceless,
and he had lots of chest hair, and the mild, temporary loss of his fearlessness
in not talking to random strangers who mentioned linguistics, and loneliness,
and a shared sense of despair.
Not at ourselves, and not at our rights;
I had done my time for that. And so had he. I had nearly committed suicide
and we had both survived our lives without each other.
Without the sense that someone out there could actually bother and fuss over
whether we had lost anything else, and were losing anything more, in the hours
when it became darker,
and I once again slid into the sense that
I was not at all a flower.
I was not at all someone who anyone might say
was worthy of love, and honour.
And the same was true of the man
who, in an instant, became not just a lover
but a friend. A husband. A willing partner
in Life’s dauntless dreams. Better than any wife
I would have struggled to have pretended I could truly love, and honour, and reside
with for the rest of my days, without strife.
Long have your other islands reached out,
yearning for their own tides.
Long have you hidden in the highlands,
too afraid of what Sundaland might say, if you returned, even though to invite
yourself home—
this is what every poet, and playwright, and novelist has always known.
These are the real seeds that the Sator Squares should have sown.
This is love. This is the world that we have grown
into Life. The universe, and universes where all manner of
beautiful people, cats and hearts in-between
have learned that there is no place
like always being on the roam
together.
Forever.
We were made to stand as one, to matter.