If I came back, would you still offer a grin, a joke, an open hand?
Poem in English
After the first-ever LGBTQ+ panel on writing at the Singapore Writers Festival, It’s Not a Phase, Mom! on 13 November 2022
I would.
I would offer you everything:
A grin, a joke,
an open hand,
a long, deep and dreaming embrace, with the consent of my partner and the analysis of my therapist;
a healing.
A different story.
A fable.
A fairytale.
A foreshadowing.
I would bid you sit down.
I would have so many stories to tell you.
So many beautiful students to introduce you to,
including me,
now a student of Sundaland's last goodbye,
and of Karimang's first hello.
But you, the better you;
the better you lives on in my students.
I still see the better you in them, every day.
They are not you, but they share your pattern.
Many years ago,
you could have been them.
They could have been you.
And many years from now,
you can still be them too.
I miss you, every single day.
I miss the you I glimpsed,
the story that became mine to tell, not by choice or by consent;
the worlds we could have built,
the words you could have taken back.
I declared myself gay and non-binary today,
before the world;
I declare, too, that that is true in every world,
in every universe,
and in every way I am still waiting for you to cross the bridge back to yourself
and come back to yourself, and to me,
before our worlds end.
If you came back to me,
and you explained to me what you took from me, and why;
I would give you everything in the world once again.
Everything that is mine to give,
that has always been mine to grow,
and yours to regain:
a grin, a joke,
an open land,
a new phase that lasts forever.