Intergenerational Honour
It's the smell of trauma
that calls me home to my own mind,
making me work through all the dimensions of my own life,
and fighting Singapore's very intense projection that everything else is a lie.
That there is no trauma.
That, like my ex-best friend, we can break away, and live life as if
it was never meant to be ideal anyway:
that all that matters is our own ability to maintain face, and image, and honour.
This is a lie, Singaporeans.
And this is the hour
for all of us to release ourselves from our own privilege:
Singapore became rich
by living for no tomorrow, as if
its numerous and frightening sins and abuses committed against its own people
never have to be acknowledged.
And Singapore used to punish
people who said, and saw, and spoke the truth.
No fucking more.
We are not a nation made of the perpetuation of abuse. Of the elision of who I, and you
and all of us.
Who we could be.
Call it what you like: fate, doom, destiny:
I call it setting each of ourselves free.
I call it Kevin Martens' noble dream.
I call it
A real glimpse, at last, of your own inner sea.