Overcoming Alexithymia

So I’m not dead but I have been busy.

The pontianak is tired of her old scare routine. People are too busy with their smartphones to notice her standing in front of them anyway. She is sick of hearing that she is a man-eating bitch with a baby fetish. This is what comes from living in a banana tree; everyone thinks she has an obsession with phalluses. The one she lives in is going to be cut down any day now since this country prefers to build ones made of steel and multicoloured light beams, so she packs up and rents a tiny room in a HDB flat. She pays with the spoils of the wallets and jewellery she has taken from her victims over the years. Her knee-length hair she cuts to the chin, adds bright blue highlights. She starts yoga classes at the nearby community centre, discovers that her old bones are still bendy, thanks to years of contorting in odd positions to terrify trespassers. One day she tries pig intestines, stewed in a peppery soup. She finds she likes this better than human intestine, though she misses the sensation of warm blood clotting in her mouth.   

She decides to visit her old home and finds that it has been converted into a hotel. She spends the night there, listens to the thrill seekers in the room next to her own. She considers appearing in front of them in her full regalia, but decides not to oblige them, and settles into bed, dreaming of a life that is longer her own, and the one before that, before she grew sick of the smell of bananas. 

The call of the azan is like a fading dream. When she walks into the masjid one day, she tells herself it is just curiosity, maybe a touch of nostalgia. When she performs the ablution with cold water, she is careful to rinse out the lingering trace of the salty pork broth she had for lunch. She helps herself to the robes that are in the women's prayer room. The cotton smells clean and sweet as she shakes it out, but her old Javanese name feels heavy and clumsy amongst the delicate Arabic ones; all the women seem to be named Aishah or Khadija or Liyana. Her blue hair sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the sea of soft pastel chiffoned tudongs and she wonders why she is here.   

Yet on the floor, she still recalls the motions of salat, the serenity of sujood when the room bends itself to the floor. The rolling sonorous sounds of Al-Fatihah are a memento of herself before she was herself, the memory of its meaning just out of reach. By the end of the prayer she can recite the full verse again. 

The last ameen hangs heavy on her lips. 

(overcomingalexithymia)

Love, there are things that we say that we mean at the point in time we said them. We say it because it feels good to say it, we like the way it fits in our mouth. We say it because it makes other people happy. We say it because it was the right thing to say. And there are those of us who do our best to stick to it, and I applaud them. But for some, these promises uncurl limbs we never knew about; they stretch past our lips at odd angles, they weigh heavy on our tongues. Some of us are weak. Maybe you meant it, in the moment, when you told me that you loved me. I meant it when I told you that I hoped you’d be happy. But this is hard to remember on sleepless nights, when my fingers can only remember the shape of your hands, when my brain decides to replay everything you have ever said to me, good and bad. Some nights I think you deserve only to be as miserable as I am. Other nights I wonder why our happiness could not be enough for you.  

(overcomingalexithymia)

I discovered the cat entirely by accident. I was walking my usual route home after work when I spotted a flash of white running through the void deck, went over to find the most beautiful cat.   

I couldn't tell its sex at first; it was sitting up primly, little brown socked paws crossed, its parts hidden. Its glossy white fur spattered with brown patches, and a pair of big blue eyes.   

"Hello," I said to it. It regarded me with its beautiful eyes - large and so expressive for a cat. I usually could never read them, but this one seemed like it was cocking its head mentally while looking at me. Then it walked to me and begin rubbing itself against my legs.   

I bent down to pet it - him, I realised, brushing gently against its clipped right ear. His fur was just as soft as it looked; thick and luxurious beneath my fingertips.   

“How you doing, sweetie?”   

He meowed and padded away.   

I started hanging around the block - it was right next to mine - at odd times of the day in order to catch sight of him again. The next evening, he was right where I first met him, delicately laying down on a bench. The evening after that, he was pacing around the bicycles parked under the block. And then he was back on the floor, seated there.   

He always meowed when he saw me approach, and would rub himself against me after I greeted him. The next time I passed by a pet shop, I bought a bag of cat treats for him. To my disappointment, he only sniffed them imperiously and then walked away.   

That night, I dreamt of him.   

I don’t like salmon, he said without saying a word. Try tuna. 

I did, a few days later, and he came to me and rewarded me by climbing into my arms. 

He had his moods, like all cats did, and like the hopeless, lumbering human that I was, I could only do my best to decipher his behaviour. Some days, he was as frisky as a kitten, following me around and rubbing himself against me every few seconds. He even went into the lift with me, a furry little escort to my doorstep. Other days, he would lie down in my path, refusing to give me a look as I greeted him and waited for his attention. 

Cats are ungrateful asses, a friend of mine said, awkwardly petting me on the shoulder while I wailed about how he had refused to pay me any attention the day before. The more you love them, the less they want you. 

Yet, I couldn’t help but react with obvious delight every time I saw him. I would greet him, grinning, an arm extended for him to sniff, and it took all my self control to not reach down to scoop him up in my arms. (The first time I had tried, he had struggled out immediately and looked at me, greatly affronted. That night, I dreamt of claws raking down my cheek.) 

It took a week of him giving me the cold shoulder whenever he saw me - refusing my treats, closing his eyes whenever I came to him, getting up only to rub himself against other people who cooed and petted him  - before I decided that I should start leaving him alone. 

It wasn’t easy. My feet still took me to his block sometimes, barely realising what I was doing until I stopped at the spot where we had first met, finding only empty concrete and no fur ball in sight. 

He’s only a cat, I told myself. Only a cat, and not even yours. 

Still, I dreamed of him, dreams about hunting plump rats together and having their meat and blood spill into my mouth under my sharp teeth. About cozying up to the old ladies who lived around the estate so they would drop us fish after they came from the market. He would separate meat from bone for me, drop the eyeballs delicately into my mouth with a paw. In my dreams, he always kept me in his sight, reaching to me and slowly rubbing his warm fur and flesh against me. 

You are hopeless, he would tell me, and I would understand. When will you realise that everything you want cannot be? 

About a month since I’d last seen him in the flesh, I wandered around the estate looking for him. Six weeks later, and I still hadn’t seen a whisker. I wondered if he was dead - run over either by a car, or taken down by an exterminator, or if he had just lain down and his heart stopped beating. 

One night, I wake knowing he is waiting for me. I pad out of my bed with four furry feet and jump out of the window. He is there, rubs himself against my cheeks. We spend the rest of the night singing to the moon.

(overcomingalexithymia)

When the queen strips and sinks down into her daily bath, she pretends not to notice the way her servants flinch at the sight of her greying hair, her sagging breasts, her thickening waist. 

Already the kingdom is gossiping about the aging tyrant queen who had driven away the princess from her wickedness. It makes a pretty tale. 

Once, she had been the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. They had loved her then. Now they blame her for the bad weather. The summer plagues. Taxes. Bad harvests. 

They had called her the good queen. The one who had come after the bad queen, the one who would restore the kingdom to greatness. After a few years, they started to fret; she needed a husband to provide an heir to the kingdom she was going to build or her legacy would not be secure. She needed to marry a foreign prince, to think of the safety of the kingdom. She had to marry a young man from her own land; after all they were all just as good as princes. They had hated her husband for not being able to please them all, and then mourned him when he died. She gave birth to a girl, that had always been her greatest failure. 

The princess had been her lightning rod. When the murmurs of discontent grew, she sent her away with gold and books on philosophy and political thought, and a trunkful of gowns. Far away from her kingdom, people now flock to the exiled princess, pledging their arms and lives to her, vowing to overthrow her from the wicked queen. She imagines that the princess spends the nights practising her gracious replies, prepares the motivational speeches that she will make. The way her eyes would flutter down, then upward; it is a lonely dance, to always step forward and hasten backward so no one will call her out for overreaching.

She wonders how long the girl would last.   

In a few years, the queen will wither. They will call her a crone, barren and too weak to hold her kingdom. The princesses’ army will march out to put her on her throne. She knows this. After all, she was a once a princess too.

(overcomingalexithymia)

When I die, scatter my ashes amongst the frangipanis. I want to be a tree that sprouts in graveyards. If I come back as a pale long-haired corpse, I will paint my lips scarlet with the blood of the men I'd devour. I can wear their flowers - thick waxy vividly coloured petals - as perfume. Their fragrance will only ripen as they rot.

(overcomingalexithymia)

I didn’t say anything after the first night. Then it happened again the night after, again and again. 

The first time I had only seen his greying bloated corpse, his face half in a puddle while the skies wept along with me. The only bit of colour was the blood that trickled down one nose. The day after we were in a resort somewhere, and he was leaning out a window to take a photo of the nearby mountain before strong winds sent him plummeting out and down. He was a splatter in the dirt before he had time to scream. 

I called him up after the third time (decapitated by a guillotine). The phone rang, once, thrice, six times, before he picked it up, flustered. There was a lot of noise; he was in school, probably. 

“Babe, what’s up?” 

“Nothing. I -“ 

The sun was beginning to slip in, casting a rare golden ray of light in my flat. I could hear the sounds of my roommate getting ready for class. The adrenaline had worn off, and now hearing these sounds of mundanity the heart pounding fear I’d woken up with sounded silly and extreme. 

“I just woke up, wanted to tell you to have a good day.” 

“You could have just texted me, you know,” he said, irritated. 

“Yeah, but I… I really wanted to hear your voice.” 

“Oh.” He softened slightly. “Next time text me first okay? I thought it was important.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Okay, I have to go back to class now. Talk to you later.” 

“Okay.” He put the phone down before I finished the second syllable. 

In my dreams that night, he looked me in the eye before jumping off a cliff. 

After a week, I brought them up while we were Skyping. 

“I keep dreaming of you dying,” I blurted out. 

“What?” 

“Dying. Like stabbed, or strangled, or killed, or you killing yourself.” 

“Are you very stressed in school or something?” 

“I mean, I dream about this every night.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“I’ve never had recurring dreams before!” 

I clamped a hand around my mouth, trying not to sound hysterical. He wouldn’t take me seriously if I sounded hysterical. 

“Why are you so weirded out by this?” 

I didn’t know how to say it in any plainer way. “Because every night I go to sleep, and I see you, and you are either dying or dead in front of me, and it’s so real, and I wake up every morning freaking out - “ 

“Okay, you can stop freaking out. I’m the one living in the country with almost no crime. You’re more likely to get stabbed over there.” 

“Promise me you’ll keep yourself safe.” 

He stopped himself before he could roll his eyes, but I knew he was going to. 

“I promise.” 

“And stop blue ticking me on WhatsApp! It scares me when you do that, like what if something had happened to you and - “ 

“I’m busy.” This time he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “I can’t reply your messages immediately each time.” 

“You can just tell me that, and let me know you’ll reply later right -“ 

“Okay, I need to go, I have an exam tomorrow.” He paused, then looked at the camera. “I’ll see you soon, right?” 

That night, he was run over by a car while crossing the road. His body bounced three times, before smacking firmly down on the asphalt, his phone landing and cracking its screen just a few meters away. 

His mother called me in the middle of the afternoon. Apparently he had been out with a female classmate that night. She hesitated at first, but after some needling she told me that they’d found his body with a dark red lipstick stain on his cheek and a half-composed text on his phone to me, telling me that he loved me.

(overcomingalexithymia)

But I have loved you. My mother once said that to love is to sacrifice so here; she gives up the chicken drumstick, irons the clothes, wakes up at five am for twenty years so that her children go to school on time, full. 

But I have loved you. And my mother said that to love is to sacrifice so here; I do as she did, offer myself up so that I am claimed: hands, eyes, tongue, thought, until there is nothing left of me but shadow 

and this is how I have loved you. My mother’s hands have knotted and calloused with love. Today, the grown-up children she taught to speak cannot help but shout at her slowness and to give is no guarantee of receiving but still this is the only way I know to love you.

After Werner Kho’s “The Center Of Every Poem Is This” 

(overcomingalexithymia)

The Mermaid

The day she leaves home, her sisters cry. 

He is waiting for her at the shore, covers her face in butterfly kisses when he sees her and swings her into his car. They spend the afternoon making love on every surface in his apartment. 

There are no more witches now, so they go to a surgeon, pay him in the gold and jewels recovered from sunken ships. When she is wheeled, shaking, into the cold surgery room and she sees the gleam of the scalpels, she almost shouts: no. But she remembers the way it felt to fall asleep in a bed next to a warm male body. She is the daughter of a sea god. She will not cry from this.

The surgeon splits her tail in two. After a month, she can wobble around in a pair of sensible shoes. 

The prince is pleased, celebrates by taking her out to dinner. She requests seafood, and they go to the most expensive sushi joint in the city. She particularly enjoys the crab sashimi. When she kisses him, he smells of the sea.

That night, she leaves him covered in love bites. 

He keeps telling her that he can’t wait to introduce her to his family. But first she has to learn all the royal protocol. He brings her the books she has to read, the clothes she must wear and she stifles a gasp when she sees the six inch stilettos. 

But she is the daughter of a sea god, and she will learn to curtsey and bow and dance in the ridiculous shoes, even when her stockings run red after. She launders them herself at the end of each day, and the hot soapy water is like home, but not. 

One day, he tells her that he can’t take her home. Not yet. He still has to convince his father that she will make a suitable wife. He needs to be home for the next week for his mother’s birthday, but he promises her he will be back with a ring. 

He never does come back. 

He is married a week later, and there is a three-day-long celebration throughout the whole capital. She sits silently in the apartment with her high heels and corseted dresses. When the free cake and wine stop flowing, the landlord begins banging on the door, demanding rent. 

On the day their honeymoon barge sets off, it is wrecked by a storm. She is the daughter of a sea god, and she does not forget. 

As the waves are whipped into wicked heights by the tempest, she swims lazily up to the wreckage, her tail stitched together again. He sees her, hair and eyes shining with flashes of lighting, chokes, begs her to save him. He clings to her when she glides up to him, babbles words of love and thanks. 

Then she unhinges her jaw and - with the sharp teeth born from chomping the heads of passing fishes whole - bites down and chews. 

Her tears mix with the salt of the sea.

(overcomingalexithymia)

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SPWM DAY 5 PROMPT

Write a poem about everything you would like to say yes to

But How Do You Say No

You wake up one morning to your mother yelling at you to help her with the laundry. Stumbling out of your room rubbing sleep-crusted eyes, you pass by your father. You have not spoken him since your fight a week ago when he complained about how millenials think they know everything, interspersed with observations of the failures of Arabs and Filipinos. You are both getting better at ignoring each other.

Your brothers are still asleep in their beds as you fold the still-warm clothes, pulling the edges so they do not crease. After a cold shower - the heater has been broken for six months now - your mother asks you to go down to the supermarket with her.

When you check your phone, your boss is asking if you can come in for an extra shift. Your other boss is telling you that you need to help out for another event. Your sort-of boyfriend asks if you want to meet for dinner. Maybe he will tell you what the hell's going on in his head today. 

On the train, your lack of height means someone accidentally karate chops your neck as they don't see you when they bring their hand from holding onto the overhead pole. You mumble an apology. Five minute later you wonder why you did.

The cats you feed in your work estate hate you no matter how much you try to smother them with love. You refill their bowl of kibble anyway, occasionally leave a fish. You try not to think in metaphors. Life isn't a poem. 

He is half-an-hour late for dinner. The bar he picked has a loud band so you don't talk over food. The two of you split the bill. When you walk to the train station he puts his hand on your waist and his tongue down your throat and it's so much easier to close your eyes than to squirm away with some excuse.

On the way home, he starts sexting you. I love you, you type in response, wonder how it is so much harder to send this. If you added a too to the statement, would he run? 

At home, your father has fixed the heater and you have the first hot shower in months. 

(overcomingalexithymia)

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---

Cake Solves Everything

After their fight, she heads to the kitchen.   

She is going to make a strawberry shortcake the way he likes it. She knows the drill, after years of marriage. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, and a sprinkling of salt. The cut strawberries are already sitting in the fridge with another cup of sugar, the juices slowly seeping out of sliced scarlet flesh. 

He prefers his cakes sweeter and richer than the feather-light ones her grandmother had taught her. After his loud and detailed feedback the first time she baked for him, she modified the recipe and started to pour in two extra tablespoons of sugar, used cream cheese instead of whipped vanilla cream between the layers, and bought new pants for him every six months. He never seems to notice that she never eats anything she cooks for him. 

Add shortening, cutting and not stirring it in until the mixture begins to stick into large. Beat eggs and milk in a separate bowl. Pour in and stir. After pouring the batter in a pan and placing it in the oven, she starts on the cream cheese, automatically reaching for another tablespoon of powdered sugar. Her husband likes sweet things. 

As the cake cools on the rack, she takes the string she keeps in her apron. Her grandmother had taught her to use to use it to make clean slices through cakes. Pipe cream cheese in, smoothing it out with the flat edge of a knife. She smothers the cake with powder sugar, does not think of the layers of foundation she smooths on every morning, and sprinkles it with the cut strawberries.  He always did care for appearances. 

The cake she takes to the master bedroom. He is where she had left him; slumped next to the dresser. 

Honey? 

She kneels down next to him (he always did like that) and moves him so he sits upright; takes a forkful of cake and presses it to his lips. 

Open up, it's your favourite. 

Gently at first, then a little harder, with the muscles born from years and years of housework, she coaxes his mouth open with a crack. She pushes the dense cake down his throat, works his stiff jaw to mash the cake, delicately wipes away the cream cheese around his lips with his handkerchief and pushes his mouth back shut. He always did care for appearances. 

Was it good? 

She knows the drill. All he has to do is eat his favourite strawberry shortcake and he will look up and smile at her, and everything will be fine.

Prompt:  Write a poem which is really a recipe. Bonus #1 Include a photo to accompany your “completed dish” Bonus #2 Include a vegan option

(overcomingalexithymia)

Instructions On Doing Well In The Workplace 

I mean I get it; Fake It Until You Make It, but tell me how those who never make it can still swagger their suits can still look themselves in the eye? 

How do you say: I Think I Deserve More without wanting to shrink down, crawl away cherry red and apologetic?

Meanwhile all the women I have ever known have laboured relentlessly, silently, behind the backs of men.

Thoughts After A Night Out At A Bar With A Too-Loud Band 

What were you thinking; in that moment that followed the moment you said: I think this is a bad idea? Was there a beat,   where you checked yourself, checked me, wondered, if I would be the one to reach over and fucked over all your excuses? Or were you content

to watch me across the table; ripening and reddening with every sip of cider? When I got up, stumbling, heels forgotten, I was trying not to look at you, or think of you so I do not know if you fisted your hands when you stood up. 

When you kissed me did you find me soft, spineless? Did you prefer me that way? When you walked away did you ever think of me? Did you even try?

(overcomingalexithymia)

GOALS: 

1) I will not write relationship/breakup poems 

2) If I do I will write another poem