“Merlionsman!” you yell, in furious despair.
It is dark, and rainy. Something in the air
is telling you that there is no time like the present to dare
yourself to still want to hold onto your plan. To spare
yourself the agony, of losing all that you care
about.
Which, in the end
is nothing.
“Merlionsman!” you scream, raising your hundred thousand voices into the glare
of the false sun. Into the lies of the oncoming storm that you fear will lay bare
who you are. How much you want to be someone who has not somehow impaired
themselves. Who went and stared
straight into the heights of the abyss, and laughed. A sound you thought rare
but which is actually so ridiculously common. Like the grass, and the weeds, and every last strand of this lucky lion child’s hair.
And, in the end,
I find you are the one running
instead of me.
“Merlionsman!” you pretend to beg,
your eyes fixed on the Chabi di Strela, the Key to Star-Strength
that I have finally brought within inches of the Gate of All Worlds. The length
is fortuitously small. Tiny. Infinitesimal. A hair’s breadth
or a grass’s. A weed’s. Like what you used to say about creole people. How we were believed left
to our own infernal, fiery, sinful devices. When actually we were left bereft
of our own cultures. Our own writers. Our own psychoemotional, buff, sexy heft
which I am now leaning against the Gate, that you said
no one should ever open, because no one
was worthy enough to be the one who comes back from the dead
and it still wasn’t me.
It still wasn’t the Dragon
but the language I represent.
And so, you keep saying my name,
but I am a little of hard of hearing. I can’t hear what you said:
justu yo podih ubih yo onsong sa linggu.
This is what is going through my head:
Yo teng ngua korsang, ngua mulera. Ngua alma. Ngua korpu Kristang.
And just like that, the storm breaks.
The darkness abates,
and the key and the gate
are oh so very well met.