Drug Trafficking
(at poor Sebastian's insistance)
For Sophia
the roses from my birthday have died. they're still standing at my table and i haven't cleared them out even though it's been a few days since they died. something's different this time about the dying roses, or just dying flowers. i always say that i want fresh flowers even though they will die, because they're pretty when they live. but i don't know. now it seems a little little bit pointless. maybe i should have thrown them away when they were still nice so i'll always remember them like that. so much for so much beauty. -- ladyofwisdom
Come with me. Hop on this train that smuggles the dream that I can write love into happening and we shall travel in search for the flowers that may never die.
***
A single rose can be my garden...a single friend, my world. - Leo F. Buscaglia
***
The first thing I notice about you is that you are illegally messaging someone during class. An understated daring guides your fingers as you glance ever so often at the teacher and down at your mobile beneath the table. You tell me you haven’t purchased your lit text yet and I offer to check out the bookstore near my house. We exchange phone numbers.
That afternoon, I text you to inform you that the book is out of stock here as well. I imagine you on a bus, a little disappointed as you read the news. You reply that it’s okay.
Not knowing you is a magical thing, because then I can invent the best and the worst for you.
***
I remember because it’s the only thing that keeps me alive.
***
A school field trip divorces us from the familiar classroom. We are whisked away in a bus to museums and industrial sites and an exhibition on an imaginary town whose name I no longer remember. (A/N: It’s Wessex, I think. Now I remember.) All I can recall is the bus: its stiff seats and cheap curtains draped across the windows and there between the two is you: quiet as this afternoon where we take a slow drawl down the roads.
At Jurong Island, we’re taken on a bus tour. The tour leader embarks on a winding narration of the distillation of crude oil, expounding on the industrial applications of certain components and unknowingly highlighting the pointlessness of this excursion. I mean, who needs to know the distilled components of crude oil anyway? As the bus continues to amble past intimidating towers of chemical plants labelled ‘NAPHTHA’, we doze with our eyes open, pretending to pay attention to the lady speaking in front of us. I can hardly stop myself from telling her: the only thing fascinating about Jurong Island is its seclusion.
Nonetheless, the afternoon brings me beside you. And to while away the time we begin singing. I’d like to think that you fancied my voice (Yes, it’s true. I’m this big egomaniac) and that this is the happiest I’ve ever felt singing. There was no judgment, just time and our voices and you teaching me for the first time in my life how to harmonise. And you, of course, you becoming more than just that noiseless girl with a rare smile and a cute laugh.
***
I remember because it may be the only thing that keeps me alive.
I peer into the past and there it is: my lost chance, you, love, futures, all. Mere inventions of life: our stories, each one a thread making its lonely revolution of the globe.
And we can only shield our eyes from the sun.
***
It is an important day for you. It costs eight dollars for me. I’m in no place to say how much it means to you, but I can feel it, your anticipation hovering palpably even from a mile away, taunting me for being late. I’m coming, I’m coming, I protest, as I fidget with my shirt sleeves.
For some strange reason the car cannot reach the concert hall. The road gentries are up for the upcoming National Day’s rehearsals, and for the first time in my life I curse the need for this blatant display of patriotism that has given us a public holiday. I have no idea how to get there on foot, and my father refuses to let me out of the car. Hope is hardly a compass when you have no map. (Thinking back, I should have just alighted and trusted my instincts. Or my legs.)
Time trickles away as the car weaves its way through the narrow roads, burdened with expectation and subsequent disappointment. I think of you, and now that I’ve seen (and regretfully, sung on) that stage, I picture you on it, sitting on a third of a chair with your instrument poised lightly in your hands, fingers dancing across the keys and tone holes. I imagine the fullness of the sound and the blinding lights, conjuring up the soaring crescendo that precedes a climax.
Somewhere close the ocean glows.
As the car crawls away from town, any chance of attending your concert diminishes (exponentially, I may add. We all must use a little math, however distasteful it may be). I’m so angry with myself I’m crying childish, fitful tears. At this point, I can hardly be concerned with being embarrassed.
Why am I writing this? Am I asking for a forgiveness to be taken as a generalised pardon for all my faults? Tell me.
***
The six of us emerge from the sea, salty and wet and pleasantly tired. After building a sand-couch and lounging on it and watching it being slowly swallowed by the rising tide, we decide to head for lunch at Sakae Sushi.
The others shoot us knowing looks and send us to the lockers to get money. Hand in hand we edge along the beach, the waves whipping my too-long bermudas against my legs and the wind smiling in your eyes. The sun blazes too fiercely for it to be romantic but we try our best. The sand shifts between our toes. Around us, children frolic in the shallow water, shrieking at one another. We don’t say a word.
We retrieve the money and leave, treading carefully along the pebbled walkway. The path leading to the restaurant is lined with planks of dark, varnished wood. It’s insanely hot and we make that final sprint across that scorching platform together, gasping, breathing. When I am with you it dawns on me abruptly that, yes, I am living.
After lunch, we take the Skyride and I watch your legs dangle from the seat in front of me as we are lifted high above the trees. I wonder what you are saying to the others with you when I see you talking animatedly, your head tilted slightly to one side. Turning away and looking down, I imagine us all falling from such a height and it makes me feel a little queasy. I imagine saving you and it makes me feel a little better.
At the end of the day, the group of us stand beneath the public showers and shampoo our hair in the open, the sprays of water playfully catching the sunlight and throwing rainbows into the air. You laugh, delighted by this unexpected phenomenon. I’m awe-struck, because this is exactly how I’d want to remember you: laughing at me through a curtain of water as you stand (fully-clothed) in the shower amongst the dancing rainbows.
Do you remember me?
***
Fifteen minutes past closing time. I walk down the countless rows of bookshelves in the dim light, my footfalls light against the coarse carpet. Every night I read and re-read the shadows falling upon proven fact and flippant imaginations. After all, I do work here.
About twenty metres away from the exit, I stumble upon you, emerging from the shadow of a bookshelf or a pillar, or, perhaps, from a blackened corner in my mind. You turn your bare, sculpted face to me and I falter under your searching gaze, the darkness pushing us closer still until I find myself directly before you.
Time stills. My fingers travel across two centuries of the history of India and your back leans firmly against the heights of Mount Everest, and between us and the real world is five girths of knowledge. Our bodies meet and we kiss, eyes closed and wandering.
It remains debatable that I’ve imagined it all.
***
It’s almost midnight. We tramp down Orchard Road in the stiff heat and buy ice-cream sandwiches from a roadside vendor, chocolate for me and chocolate chip for you. They melt and drip all over our fingers and onto the floor (and also on my jeans, but that’s not the point). Still we walk on. When the green man flashes and we take to running across the road, I jump at the chance and grab your sticky hand. You don’t let go, but neither do you squeeze back.
We wander into the empty mall and watch the elevators trail aimlessly up and down, carrying nothing but air. It is bright and cold and quiet. You suggest taking a ride on one of those cars for children. The machine swallows your dollar coin and we sit side by side on the boot of the car, closeness against closeness. As the music plays and the car begins to move, I stare at you, past you and through your singular beauty intact and fragile. Outside, the world ticks past. Some unknown metal joint in the car squeaks its protest under our combined weight, but I hardly notice it. All I know is that at this moment, I long to read you, to feel what you feel and to be free to study your thoughts as I do a book stolen from the vaults. It is at this moment that I think I can unveil your truths with lies of my own. Can it be in this moment that we begin?
Looking back, the rest of it is a blur. We stumble out of the mall, and I wave you off into a cab before trudging back to the train station.
The train whirrs and whistles as the night moves on without me, carrying you into your future.
***
At present, you’ve dissolved into a world from which I’ve been denied. It is very likely my own doing.
How strange it is when I feel you drawing me from my own stubborn silence with your quiet disappointments. Repeatedly I resist, but even in my resistance there is an inkling of response. For as I write this I weave in my ardent wish to see you happy.
Well then, look. Look closer. Not at you or me, but into that little space in-between where understanding happens. And there she is: Our garden green and growing with the flowers that can never die.
Together, we steer the roses toward the sun.