Not a day goes by.
Not a day.
Nothing goes by.
It is still October 1, 2008;
still February 1, 2013;
July 3, 2019;
Christmas Day, 2021;
August 31, 2022.
Nothing goes by
when your body is derivative,
your songs discordant,
your achievements insufficient,
your writing beyond meritorious,
but unsellable,
unpublishable,
unrecognisable.
Your memories unquenchable.
The seas in your heart
uncontrollable.
The fires in the deep
undocumentable.
Do I have to document
everything for you?
Everything?
Do I have to do
everything?
Haven't I done enough?
Came out for 500+ people who couldn't in SJI and CJC,
wrote Singapore's first queer sci-fi novel,
"revitalised a language" and made revitalisation a thing,
came out again, for 6 million people who couldn't in 2021 and 2022 and 2023,
literally changed the destinies of 140 champions and more,
literally figured out the structure of literally the entire human psyche and also 77,000 years of forgotten human history, and also how to deal with abuse, and also the meaning of life itself,
literally did not die,
literally did not.
Literally did not do enough.
Never enough.
It's okay.
Ngka nada.
Take my tears too, then.
Take my tears and drink them.
Like you already have with my body,
my life's blood,
my dreams and my shame.
With shame, I can do it.
I have shamed myself into doing it all —
And not for you.
Just for me to get by.
Learnt how to discern people's ego-patterns,
to hype and sell my ethnicity, my community,
to die without dying a hundred thousand times
just to get by.
I see you every single raw and aching time I see
someone of your pattern.
I see who you could be.
I see who you were to me.
I see who I was to myself,
every day and night,
before you were anything to me,
before you were every one of my days and nights.
Not a day goes by.
Only time, and abstracts, and people with your pattern.
Only days and nights.
As we say in Kristang,
Nada nadi chegah.
It is sufficient to arrive.