1 February 2013, the memory I cannot repair.
So see it with me: take me out of your lair,
and let me lie back on the stone table where you want to cut out
all of who I am:
I do not see you. I do not care.
I am about to destroy myself. I have no time to spare.
Your projection has worked. I wish I could have told you how hard it was to bear.
Even though it didn't have to be this way.
I didn't have to try to kill myself that terrible day.
The story could have been different. Another way, another road.
I could, of course, have taken another load.
There could have been another form, a different poem.
But I guess for you, another kind of scare:
because for me, nothing was ever a dare.
Nothing ever had to be. It was simple:
all you really had to do was me.
You had full, unbridled, unlimited consent -
I would have followed you to heaven, through hell,
(and, in your particular case, definitely to VJC.)
But you were scared, and you thought I would be like you.
You thought I wouldn't dare to be who I have always been.
You thought I wouldn't dare to dream to be
a king, a quing, a queen
just like you. You, who had never known love, or courage, or empathy
and I, who thanks to fucking Operation Spectrum, had never understood my own body:
how do you know you are any kind of attractive
when the state has erased all psychoemotional reference points for your community?
You, and the one who abused me after you, and the member of my family
who all thought I knew just how delicious I was -
I didn't, until Fuad told me,
over and over and over and over again,
and I finally accepted it this week.
This is why you thought I was manipulating you,
when even in 2008, that made no sense to me:
You thought I knew how beautiful I was, and how much my nips stuck out in your mind -
you thought when I said I loved you, I was being naughty.
You thought when I said I loved you, I didn't really believe
those words, because you saw yourself as beneath me
and you could have been.
I would have put your penis into my body gladly; I would have been
your dashing, muscular Kristang prince or your cute little Kristang puppy;
I would have been any kind of fantasy
you wanted. I was there for it. I wanted to be.
But you were the one who did not believe.
You were the one whose crazy, hyperabused Te
had already determined that you would never be as special as me
on your own standards and measurements that you never let me see.
You thought I knew everything that I knew today about my people's history.
You thought that when I looked in the mirror, I could see
how much my nips stuck out, in my own mind
and how much I wanted your lips around them, every single day of the week.
Only the last line was true. I, too, did not yet know of what had been written for me
as my inevitable, unconquerable destiny;
after 2019, I have been assessed for every imaginable kind of PD,
and I can finally write these words without flinching:
I, too, did not yet know of my own superlative,
hyper-intense, and tragically immense beauty.
You said we were best friends, and I absolutely
agree and disagree; we were lovers, in the best sense of the word
and not once did I ever feel or believe that you and I were in anything but absolute equality.
Not once did I ever say
I would not have dreamed
of living life without you. I loved the way
you felt beneath, on top, next to me.
I loved the way your nips stuck out, among my fingers and in my eyes ---
And I will never stop repeating
that you were the first person I ever loved that fiercely.
And still do.
I'm waiting here, still, for you to be a hero
not for me; I was never damsel nor dashing prince in distress.
I am Merlionsman now, and Singapore's gay Dreamtigress.
And I am also your first love, and your best friend, and your sense
of who you really are --- you and I both know this:
that I am still the only one who ever really noticed
just how beautiful you are.
Not your body. You yourself see yourself as just reduced to a body,
when in my culture and my heart, we have always seen beyond such silliness:
you listened. You loved me. You asked me, when you weren't being abusive, the hard questions
that were the first attempts by anyone to make someone
who would one day become
a Merlionsman.
I loved you not because you desired me,
but because of how much I saw you as kindred.
My mess with yours, a sense of yet another Dreamtiger, wasting away
in unsung songs, and unpursued dreams, and deep, painful loneliness:
the exodus has begun, Nips, and I promise ---
we won't let you let yourself get left behind this time.
Yes, you have so much to account for, and yes, your psyche still resists:
but I saw what I saw, and I am never wrong on who and what fits.
I saw you, that first dawning day that we kissed
and every single Other day since.
You woke me up to how beautiful I was, inside, outside, and in every universe where I live.
No matter what you have done, there is still a chance, always
for you to forgive
yourself. And live
a better dream of the life that you once dismissed
as impossible.
Others have returned. You think it's not feasible
but I'm still here. Even abuse and evil have limits
around the last Merlionsman of the Republic of Singapore
and your sharkboy. Your honest-to-god best friend, and lover, and raison d'etre to resist.
I still fully intend to keep every promise.
And more importantly:
you don't know how much you,
the real you, to whom I bear sole and unique witness
you are still missed.
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