I bring the same peace I experienced in the cemetery here.
The night it happened I couldn't breathe.
It was as if all desperation hit me and then I had to see it hit you.
Yet today I'm beginning to see that it wouldn't have been any party's loss.
Because we have both been made whole from the start.
What was interesting though, was how we prayed.
And everything can be forgiven, and made new.
Thank You for hearing my cry (literally).
I ask for grace but I must be able to offer it as well.
Yesterday I thought to myself, "It'd rather have someone tell me I like you than I love you."
I love you are words that are hard to say.
I'm not playing hard to get, I just think that love is a heavy word and I am not ready to keep saying them over and over again with the way I have been hard on myself, and hard on you.
But I like you very much, "I like you so much", as you always say when you hold me close.
I know you do.
It's going to rain again.
Yesterday around this time, it was pouring and the crew sat together under the back hood of the van and I couldn't stop laughing about everything.
They are so nice. That was nice.
Then Georgina, a bird watcher, whisked my producer and I away in her car to go on a 15-minute trip to watch the birds in the cemetery.
We were lucky, because we saw Whitesocks perched high on a branch, an eagle that many people have wanted to see but unfortunately, went away without having spotted him.
We also saw black drongos fly about in flocks and stopped for awhile under their tree with the windows down and listening to our surroundings as the weather settled.
It was so beautiful.
I wrote a poem just the other day while on the bus, influenced by the many trips I've recently made to Bukit Brown Cemetery with the crew.
This poem is for my mother.
At his funeral I want everyone to know I worshipped my father
I don't wish him dead, don't get me wrong - I know he will live forever
I hold him high and when he lets me down, it breaks me.
I want everyone to know that the only person who had to
Swallow my wrath and let it hurt her was my mother
Sometimes it feels like she's a single parent when our day goes sour
But I always ran to the other,
Always worshipping the father
Taking for granted sacrifice that was rooted,
So firmly beneath dark earth that lay.
So quietly, subtly, that went unnoticed.
My mother's love is like a grave that is about to be exhumed
Life is the priest, ringing its bells and chanting endlessly about its many toils in this world
In this world, her love is the once-living body,
Whose beauty was nourished, not marred
Made amplified, though not justified,
By earth my father laid on her
To make me.
And when she was to be resurrected, I died.
But every child is dumb and wretched and I couldn't let her be born
- So I became her ghost and cried for many days and nights,
Weeping and making sure they heard my wailing resonate through the cemetery
Singing morosely oh how my mother loved me, how my mother is part of me.
Do you think we gave birth to our mothers?
Because when I killed her I killed me too.
At her funeral I want everyone to know I worshipped my father
But this, this is a poem about my mother, and I will let her have it,
Let her call me baby,
While we are both alive and loving, loving, loving,
Loving, loving, and living.
--
Tonight I'll be having dinner at Robertson Quay with Ken and I know it will be a good time.
If you're in love, you're the lucky one.
But if you're out of love, you're the lucky one as well. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
