Page 51 - 2023 eMag Final Draft

I

懿

Remember way back then in school? When I introduced myself.

忻 “22 strokes.” A name everyone knew, yet never used, because I didn’t want them to.

It was a name I had forsaken.
Cool fruit jelly in plastic tubes, little bowls of noodles sold by the ringgit, nyonya kuih

from the quiet old lady by the roadside, men selling ice cream on bikes, pigeons I always An environment I grew up with, never thinking I’d fit in. It was always a struggle for
thought were crows, crows I always thought were pigeons, a walk from wonder to wonder. me to express myself here. So dense, like shoving a textbook down my throat, names

I couldn’t remember because they all ended with the same syllabus or finale, that they
At some point, I stopped noticing them. I stopped caring about the red dresses they wore would all realise my faults eventually, eventually.
to weddings, the dialects they were speaking, dinners they were sharing, everything, if it
b
meant less than moving forward. The little things I never realised were just for us, from “Is that a reason to run?” A little chime rings.
us, and yet to be stolen from us. Taken for granted, none of it posed much of a treasure
to me. The bread man, or at least that’s what I remembered. Selling snacks and bread on his

motorbike, one of the few little charms and gems we have around here. Bags sold for
It was like letting go of a balloon, only for it to float endlessly into the sky and disappear cheap, tied up into huge heaps. Nostalgic.
into the abyss. Except this time, I’d only let it go within a sunlit atrium, its skyroof

barricading this little soul from floating off and away from my vessel. Though it remained Grasping onto the vague memory of him as it gets hazy. Reams of grey stencils fill my
a distance from me still, I learned to admire it from afar, claiming it as a part of my space, mind in his stead, strokes I can’t read, can’t understand. I’d calm down, but I already am.
until it eventually deflated, bringing itself to the ground, waiting for me to mend it back
to shape, and that’s what I did. So many regrets, none of which I can change. It’s a pity. I should’ve bought more bread

from him, more snacks for friends who never bothered standing alongside me, or maybe
Reclaiming what I was born with, knowing to never lose it again. learned to eat spicy dried squid like the rest of them.

Hopefully this time, I won’t let it go. Did this extended encore ever really matter?

It’s a pity.
c I’d forgotten my name.

50 51