I want the soil that heard my first cries to be the one that devours my body.

There are some countries that have meticulously crafted memories spanning centuries. Records of wars won and lands conquered, inventions patented and revolutions roared. Every country wants to be remembered in triumph and glory, to have their flag associated with pieces of history that bent in their favor.

I don’t claim to have read all the history books, but my memory of Malaysia is nothing like that. It’s funny, actually, that the quiet is the first thing I remember before the sounds collide into an ensemble. Then, I hear crows of roosters before an iPhone alarm ever entered the household, ma calling for help to set the dining table for breakfast that is of course nasi lemak, the sputter of motorbikes disappearing around corners, “lelong” coming from the uncle who has been at his stall since 6am, the shuffling of slippers on bare roads, the squish and wetness of meat being laid out by the butchers at the pasar pagi, and so many “lah”s.

The guilt that threatens to swallow me whole as I write this from my desk in the United Kingdom is unyielding. My entire family is back home, as are most of the friends I have met while studying abroad. I can’t help but wonder what plans have been set in motion for this commemorative day, which buildings will light up with the colors of the flag, the frequency at which the fireworks will come on. I write plenty about wanting to go home, but my feet are still firmly planted. Instead, I entertain myself with recollections.

The first time my heart was reduced to fragments, it happened on Malaysian soil. The first time I cried on the drive to kindergarten, it was in my mom’s Perodua Kancil, the kind where you had to manually wind the windows down. The first time I witnessed the execution of a durian and proceeded to dramatically run from the smell, I was in my grandmother’s kitchen in Kedah. The first time I was the last kid to be picked up at primary school, the abang guard stayed with me long after his shift should have ended. Everyone who raised me knows I cannot resist a cup of warm Milo with biscuits to celup, and I was devastated when I learned Milo did not originate from Malaysia. But never mind that, because I remember the stacked tins of snacks on the roadside I could choose from, and how I’d victoriously return home with a bag of iced gem biscuits every time, insisting that the white one is the best despite all of them tasting the same. I remember plucking out strands of my grandmother’s grey hair in return for one ringgit that I would grip tightly in my eight-year-old hands as I journeyed to the kedai runcit next door for a pack of Mamee Monster and some 555 notebooks to doodle on. And though I haven’t said it in ages, I can still feel the smugness of being able to tell someone “Penang one better”.

This country lives in our blood, in the roads allegedly named after all our grandfathers and in the recipes based on feelings rather than accurate measurements. In the way we smell the rain and collect the laundry before the first drop even hits the ground. In the way we deconstruct languages just to mesh them all together. In the way we argue which state has the best dishes but will eat anything anyway. Isn’t it special to be united by these tiny details that no one would typically pay attention to? Doesn’t this common thread infuse you with pride to be who you are? This is what it means to belong somewhere: To instinctively recognize little things in each other, to realize we are made of the same memories, even if those memories include shouting matches in Parliament on TV.

I could pick the teal of the PETRONAS logo out of a range of hues. I could close my eyes at the beginning of the Penang bridge and open them exactly when we get to the other end. I insist on going to my favorite kopitiam for breakfast even if parking continues to be a headache. I still flinch at the memory of my grandparents running after me and my cousins with a rotan. And I still feel that pang in my chest whenever I think of my dad leaving for a business trip when I was younger, not understanding why someone would ever want to leave.

But I left.

A country, just like many other things, is something you don’t appreciate until you’ve distanced yourself from it. Independence is a funny thing—great for countries long subdued, scary for individuals like me. I thought I had to leave to be free, to find meaning in my name, so I shed the yellow from the flag where I resided.

Five years later, I have found freedom and I have found myself. Chiefly, however, I’ve found that I could have achieved all of this without ever setting foot outside my tanah air. But some things you don’t know until retrospection. Good thing Malaysia will always forgive and keep her arms open.

Malaysia is home to millions whose tongues are twisted to accommodate red, white, blue, and yellow, and all kinds of tapau orders. But it is more than a home to me; it is the place I will return to when there is nothing left for me to prove.

In the meanwhile, there’s still work to do. But a piece of my heart will always be shaped like a certain part of the world map, smack dab on the equator.

Selamat Hari Merdeka.

The rising of heat is a well-known physical effect. Well, this heat has awakened the memories dormant in my atrium and conjured them to the forefront of my mind. A chronological roll call, if you will—all present, all dressed to the nines, begging for my attention. The problem with these memories is the chokehold they have on me, their sweet temptation to which I fall prey. I consume them one after another until I have made myself sick to the bone, a worshipper of the sap, a cult follower whose greed is most definitely justified.

This heat reminds me of home. Reminds me of certain people scattered all over the globe. And I can’t help but want to send across a message telling them about this heatwave that has become the all-consuming force in my life. Then, I want the conversation to run its course from there. Through sweetened waters and bittered depths. I want the shared memories they have with me to be awakened too, so that I’m not alone in this wallowing. Selfish of me? Yes. Justifiably so? Jury’s still out.

A group of my friends who are working in Malaysia met up a week ago, our still-alive groupchat their planning ground. When their reunion had concluded, someone sent across a drinks receipt. Latte. Coke Zero. Tiger. Margarita. Old Fashioned. I knew which drink belonged to which friend immediately. You couldn’t even call it guesswork. It was more intuition. More familiarity.

This summer, I find myself thinking about my friends a lot and missing some of them. I use the word “friends” liberally, because there are characters who were once listed high in the credits of certain episodes in the show that is my life that have now completely dropped out, but my mind refuses to acknowledge them as anything other than “friends”. “Acquaintance” is too verbose and “ex-friend” is unnecessarily hostile. Back to my point—I think about them more than they think about me, I’m sure. I think about how far they have gone since we last met, their careers, their partners, their families. About the next milestone they will hit that won’t be announced on LinkedIn, whether they have found god, if they have talked their way out of a speeding ticket recently. What they are reading, watching, listening to. The height of their passion for national and international politics, or lack thereof. About whether I still remember the road to their houses, if they have stared at the moon lately, when they last picked up the instrument of their childhood. Sometimes, I think about their dogs too.

And what I’ve found this summer is that my memory of my friends transcend the moments we have spent together. I’ve found that I can pinpoint what makes them memorable, the parts of them that make me proud to know them or have known them. Further to my surprise, I can’t help but notice bits of these traits and habits that I’ve picked up on, like tiny, irremovable splinters that have lodged themselves in my psyche. This fact warms my heart greater than any heatwave could.

Because the truth is that no one has mastered the art of storytelling much like Khiresh. No car is more thrillingly dangerous to be in than Alex’s, especially when crossing the Penang bridge. None have proven to be a more worthy academic rival than Derek. No cooking has been able to instantly teleport me home like Jie Hao’s. I haven’t been impressed by anyone’s handwriting since seeing Jacq’s. There isn’t a singular soul’s reading list who will make my jaw drop farther than Thaqif’s. Similarly, Jing Qi’s reading speed makes my jaw drop an equal distance. Nobody humbles me quicker than Lewis does or laughs with their entire heart more than Audra does. Flowers bloom behind every step that Chloe takes and I couldn’t have asked for a better part-time co-worker than Mai. Nary a person holds a candle to the way Rafik holds a note, and you could leave Elsa with mismatched fabrics and she’d still headline the front page on fashion week. No pigeon flies out of the page the way those illustrated by Ryan do. Amelia is exemplary in what it means to have unshakeable faith. Nobody is more unintentionally entertaining than Kevin over lunch. And if you asked me about leaders who keep their heads cool in the cruelest of storms? I’d look at Wef and Yik Khai. Denyce has the coolest job title among everyone I know. I wouldn’t have made it out of college with my sanity intact without Yi Chuan’s advice. Jia Jie’s photography makes me lust for transcontinental travels. Whimsy and feminism (both at their maximum) live and sing in Kien-Ling’s notebooks. The relentless work ethic Khairul breathes into this world is unmatchable. No one is more determined to see change in Malaysia within our generation than Jie Yee. Katherine is the only person who has always treated my problems like an adult instead of dismissing them as childish ailment. I’m still waiting to see just how far Ging Chen’s ambition will carry him. The same can be said for Nuriy and Emilia. Every day, Ian and Aerin show me that love is alive and well. Bernard does the same on a cross-continent scale. I wouldn’t be writing like I am today if it weren’t for Justin. And though he couldn’t catch me when I fell bouldering, Martyn has caught me every other time I needed him to. This list is non-exhaustive. I might just produce my own religious text if I kept going until the finish line.

Then, there are people too painful to speak of still, no matter how much time has lapsed, no matter how unstained I try to keep the memory. There’s nobody I’d rather argue about modern art with than [CENSORED]. I haven’t heard a more inappropriate joke than the ones that originate from [OMITTED]’s mouth. And, well, no one debates with such passion and stubbornness as [REDACTED]. As always, I could go on. But I’ll let sleeping dogs lie right here even if that Pavlovian bell is very tempting to ring.

The painful (yet wonderful) thing about this life is that I remember every detail. It’s like being stabbed with a flower. I remember every competition where I came in second place. Every exam in which I raised my hand for extra paper. Every time I have scratched my car. Every part-time job I have held, every late night I have spent mopping up the burger joint toilet or making the fifth batch of boba. Every walk home and every dinner party. Every time I tripped on the pavement and every time my heart cracked just a little more. Time and place are more than capable of stirring up so many emotions even when I don’t want them to. The people that come with those times and places? The words that had accompanied them? Strike deeper into my chest still.

It hurts that I cannot go back. This ache keeps crawling back to me no matter how far along the road I abandon it. I know that I have to let go or I’ll be dragged, but I’d rather leave behind some kind of evidence that I lived a life worth remembering. If I were any more reckless than my father would reasonably allow, I would trade everything in an instant for one endless night of driving down the Penang bridge with the windows down, Joji blasting from the radio, my friends in the backseat, the promise of mamak supper at the end of the road, in a heartbeat. Or an evening in Malaysian Hall, London, with in-house teh tarik, asking my friends what thought experiment they would be: Ship of Theseus? Mary’s Room? The Trolley Problem? Or the moment before the lunch bell rings in high school, where we think about the plethora of dishes available to us, strategizing, before worrying about the past year paper we forgot to do.

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As I walk in this heat, I stop resisting the rising memories. I think of Monday high school assemblies and getting our nail lengths checked. I think of the prefectorial board I never made and the queue of cars we washed in college. I think of SAT practice sets and the long hallways of an Indiana performing arts school. I think of watching my friends make nasi lemak away from home and seeing Big Ben for the very first time. I think of first snow at Weston Hall and rebelliously late nights at Babylon. I think of train rides to Coventry and hotpot dinners in Deansgate. I think of the ice cream place I limped to after I fractured my ankle bouldering, flanked by my friends. I am more memory than I am present. Every word that I write has been spoken back to me twice.

Some adventures you just don’t forget. Some stories have to be kept so they can be passed down across time. Some people are made to change the world; then there are those made to change other people. Some marks are just too indelible.

If it’s all the same to you, I’ll let this heat attack me until I’m blue all over. If it’s all the same to you, a small part of you will keep surviving inside of me. Until I’m blue all over.

And so we slowly filed out of classrooms, campuses, cities, and countries. Into careers, courtships, crises, and changes. A long-term migration pattern. Uncoordinated yet synchronized. Each of us taking a different, long, winding path toward the same destination that lies within the arms of death (as a friend, I apologize for the grimness; as a writer, this is just bread and butter for which I cannot spare remorse).

It began with keywords that were never defined during my Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina days: Emerald, marquise, asscher, prong, bezel, tension, flush, mortgage, credit score, escrow, ETFs, O1, global mobility, skilled independent…

Then came the questions. The answers to which almost always require a number: How many carats is your ring? How many kids do you plan on having? How much bonus are you getting? How much deposit did you put down? How many holidays did you take this year? How long does your visa last? How much overtime did you clock? How many books have you read? How frequently are you working out?

I have never been the biggest fan of numbers and my high school additional maths teacher who witnessed me sob over a logarithm question set can attest to this and, to this day, numbers continue to be the bane of my existence. No one has put it more succinct than Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince: Grown-ups really do adore figures and their ability to reduce meaning into metrics.

Where am I going with this? At the beginning of my twenties, my five-year plan concluded with a version of me that has it all figured out: I’d have the perfect job, the perfect man, the perfect flat, the perfect concoction to remove any kind of stain from any kind of material. We are reaching the end of those five years and, to some extent, I suppose I have figured out what works for me and what doesn’t, but my eyes can’t help but wander to the paths my peers are on. I wait for the 25-year-old frontal lobe upgrade to arrive but, meanwhile, I continue to listen to the voice on my shoulder that keeps score.

All this doubt and comparison kicked into gear when a friend of mine announced their engagement late last year. What followed since was a string of peers who took to social media with their rock and an even bigger rock. The man down on one knee against a stunning background, the perfect audio and perfect caption to boot. In just six short months, I have run out of fingers with which to count the number of peers who are now neck-deep in choosing between burgundy and maroon, lilies and peonies, basque and mermaid.

The spiral continued to provide me with a downward path when I caught wind of peers who have been promoted to senior roles, launched successful start-ups, run a marathon, or casually acquired fluency in a new language while maintaining a well-performing investment portfolio.

And while I beam with nothing but pride and happiness for them, there is a pinch of emptiness that grows at the same speed. What about you? Don’t you think you’re falling just a little bit behind? An inconvenient question, if there ever was one! My initial reaction is to laugh it away, well knowing that none of this is a race; there is no linear track on which we can accurately define who is ahead. I have aspects of my life I am content with and other facets that I am working on, and the same applies to any friend I know. There isn’t a singular yardstick a greater being can measure all of us with, and yet, this feeling that my performance is lesser than refuses to dissipate.

It may well be that I wasn’t ready for how quickly our paths diverged. In school, we traveled on one paved road and overcame similar hurdles. The same can be said for university days: Even if we weren’t walking in sync, we were still in the same woods. Then, after graduation, you can no longer hear each other’s laughter drifting from the next block or spot each other’s footprints along the tracks. We dispersed into separate directions and adulthood revealed itself to be far more intricate than I had planned for, far more difficult to navigate in isolation. Words that make sense to me individually, when spoken by dear friends, quickly morph into alien speak. I’m certain it wasn’t that long ago when all that dominated our conversations were Newton’s three laws of motions, the difference between metaphors and similes, and the stupid chemical equation that won’t balance. I’m okay to throw in the debate between capitalism and communism, as well as the drama around MNights and MGames, but engagement ring cuts, visa applications, and finances? Come on!

After playing catch up with my friends when I was last back home, it became startlingly obvious that I was no longer 17, trying to peek at the answers to the logarithm question set at the back of the book. At 24, every question is an open-ended one and there are no answers at the back of the book. In fact, there is no book. Yet, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the book exists for everyone but me.

I, just like any person out there whose joy has been thieved by comparison, have heard the counterargument that you don’t know what is going on behind the scenes of others’ lives. A ring on a Facebook post doesn’t mean the waters are calm. A “Dear connections, I am pleased to…” promotion announcement on LinkedIn doesn’t mean there isn’t a storm brewing elsewhere. A personal best Strava screenshot on an Instagram story doesn’t mean they aren’t running from other problems in life. Of course I don’t know what goes on in the background, and I may never know, but that doesn’t invalidate how things look on the surface and the emotions it invokes in me: Like everyone is less than halfway to the finish line and I have tripped over my own laces when the starting gun fired, scraped both my knees, and twisted my ankle.

Amidst the rumination, I stopped to ask myself: Could it be that I am jealous of what my peers have? Am I regretting the road I did not choose? There are characters in my life who constantly joke about how I should have just gone home to work at a bank after graduation and that that would have yielded a better life for me—one that might include a car that self-parallel parks and a property deed not too far into the future. And they aren’t wrong. Had I taken the safer path, I would be swimming in a different pool of certainty.

But all things considered, I’m happy where I am. The problem isn’t the money. The problem isn’t even security. It’s this imaginary distance I can’t stop staring at between myself and everybody else. Considering my ex who owns his house and the high school friend who has just been head hunted to lead a new department, I can’t help but feel like I should have started my own marketing agency or published my first book by now. If the answer is simply to work harder, that I can do—I will stick my hands in dirt if it promises gold. But what if there isn’t a threshold of when my work is deemed ‘enough’? What if the distance is never erased? What if I can’t stop looking at paths other than my own?

On the other hand, I don’t want to work blindly as flowers bloom and wilt in my periphery. I don’t want time to stop having meaning. I don’t want to cease feeling its passage. I want time to write, to feel, to cry, to wash my hair for longer, to call my friends over the seven-hour time zone and bitch about the latest thorn in my side.

No, I don’t regret my choices, nor do I think I’m jealous of my peers. I can tell you that even if a ring manifested on my finger instantaneously, these feelings won’t go away. I have achieved exactly what I set out to do after university on my own terms and there should be nothing but pride there. I think ‘jealousy’ might be the wrong term. Maybe what I’m feeling is some kind of positive fear: That despite having come a long way, I still have so much further to go.

And so I learn to listen to the ache of emptiness. Because it means my glass can still be filled. There are still things for me to reach for and achieve. I still have roads to choose between and doors to open. Who’s to say if I’ll have an oval ring or a baguette ring? Who’s to say how big my home library will be? Who’s to say how many paperbacks will bear my name in a bookstore? Everything is undetermined! Which means I am nowhere near done. And there is so much beauty in that, so much excitement to behold as much as fear.

So, my friends, go get engaged and buy that house and purchase that car and have the babies you want. Or relish in your freedom and hop from city to city and switch up your hobbies every month. There is so much in this life that has your name written all over it. It just might take you a while to recognize the handwriting.

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And what service would you like to rob from me today? What boundaries of mine can I offer you as a bridge to cross, lest you drown? What ailment have you come with for me to cure before you leave without so much as a penny of gratitude? I can fix up your resume, design a poster, edit away grammatical mistakes, craft a new narrative, do the laundry, clean the kitchen, water the plants, iron your shirts, excuse your malice, play the villain, be a doormat, and even stroke your ego. This is not an exhaustive list. In fact, there is no list. I am a full-service company and failure is not in my dictionary. There are no terms and conditions. You can request anything you’d like. I will walk to hell and record my findings. I will claw my way to heaven and rattle the pearly gates. I am your first choice when competition is hot and first choice when you reek of desperation that seeps into the sewers and the penthouses. I am at your disposal. But you must have misread that as ‘disposable.’

These days, I cannot bring myself to look in mirrors because I have become someone I do not recognize. I flinch whenever I write my name because I no longer embody the characters. I cannot recall the day I lost the shape of me and began adapting to the crevices of other people’s insufficiencies. I would like very much to know the moment where I was no longer allowed flaws, where over and beyond became the bare minimum for me, where someone else’s finish line is just my halfway point.

Somewhere along the way, my father stopped yelling and my mother stopped crying. It was all passed down to me, my inheritance complete. The anger and sadness are now in my name. I pay the mortgage, I host the guests. The angry man and sad woman cannot coexist under the same roof, but I hold no power of eviction. Or, rather, I cannot let them out.

And, certainly, I could try putting them in separate rooms, could tear the whole house into two. I could try looking in the mirror again and try bringing back the meaning infused into my name. Could insist on taking up my original shape and deserved space without apology. But as much as I don’t believe in fate, I think I am destined to never accomplish any of that. I think when the universe demands an apology and the culprit refuses to open their mouth, the universe extracts one from my lungs instead. I fear cracks in the mirror and splits in my name. I think I might be Eve, the apple, and the serpent.

But I inherited more than just furrowed brows and river-like eyes. I have my father’s need to hold everything together burned into my fingerprints and my mother’s condition of suffering in silence smeared across my lips. Just because I didn’t ask for help doesn’t mean I don’t want it. Doesn’t mean I don’t need it. Just because I grew up on an island doesn’t mean I’m not drowning. Just because I do it every day doesn’t mean the weight is not crushing my bones ever so fractionally.

I know I will not be fed until I show my hunger. Yet it is unpleasant for a woman of my age to bare her fangs and salivate. To live. To want. To want to live in her own name. I am domesticated if I toe the line and keep my mouth shut. I am a bitch if I bark. I am either walking too far ahead or being dragged by the leash. There is no middle ground in which I can exist.

There are claw marks on each side of my front door. Claw marks from those who need me to make up for their flaws. Claw marks from my wanting out.

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No prayer truer than a name, no theft crueler than trimmed syllables. I hate unsolicited nicknames. It’s simple: Don’t shorten my name and call it affection. Especially when I never flashed a green light for you to do so, especially when I haven’t done it to you.

A name is a sacred, powerful thing. My parents had chosen my Chinese first name on the basis that I was born a little sickly, and what they decided to call me had strength and masculinity infused into its meaning. My last name is proof that I have never been and will never be alone in this life. My name was signed, sealed, and delivered like a script of the highest order. It was no accident, no placeholder. Yet, people tear into the letter with teeth, one such person being me.

It happened when I realized that “Cheng Jie” was difficult for non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce correctly. The so-close-yet-so-far results grate my bones, and I decided to morph my name into something more palatable instead of teaching the right original pronunciation. My incessant need to fit in with the Katherines, Lewises, Martyns, and Amelias around me during high school only fueled my search for an English name.

Thus, the birth of “Allison,” strategically chosen for its phonetics, making it impossible for anyone to mispronounce, regardless of their mother tongue. Yet, it wasn’t an easy choice that fell into my lap. My foremost criteria for choosing an English name was that it had to have three syllables, equivalent to my full Chinese name. I wanted my name to take up space and time when it was spoken, to retain the length of its existence. That left me with a good variety to choose from: Stephanie, Avery, Isabelle, Maddison… really, the world was my oyster. Of course, I made sure to steer clear of names that had already been bestowed upon my friends, lest roll call descended into chaos.

There was also the concern that the end syllable could not sound too similar to “Lee” so my name, when called in full, would not sound awkward. This was when I bid farewell to “Stephanie” as a top contender. Eventually, I settled on “Allison” with double L’s because “Alison” looked indescribably bare and incomplete for me. As a bonus, “Allison” also has roots as a patronymic surname, which fell in line with the masculine element of my given name.

I began introducing myself as “Cheng Jie, but you can call me Allison.” I had already made myself more digestible, yet it wasn’t enough for some. Nicknames are always presented as gifts, topped with a bow of familiarity: I’m calling you this because I know you so well! There seems to be a presumption that familiarity can be improved by abbreviation, as if a person’s identity were too long-winded and necessitated trimming for convenience.

But a nickname isn’t a translation. It’s an approximation at best, a distortion at worst. Nicknames cut without asking where the nerve endings are. A vowel gets swallowed somewhere, a consonant softens elsewhere, and the end result is something lighter but not truer. A name in its entirety carries weight, history, and intention. What is a name if not the first word you learn to respond to? What is a name if not the very sound that affirms your existence?

A sting travels down my spine whenever someone calls me “Ali” or misspells my name as “Alison.” I hear my own erasure in their convenience, in their carelessness, even if it’s just one syllable or just one stroke. They will call it affection and claim that a nickname makes me more theirs, but affection can be an insult that lands softly like a feather. Not all offenses are sticks and stones. I do not want to answer to what is easiest for you. My identity is not malleable to your comfort. The shape of my existence cannot be negotiated to your liking.

Too often, I wish I had planted my feet firm and not chosen an English name for myself. I wish I had taken the time to teach people how my name should sound. I want people to learn how to call me like my parents had intended. To siphon the strength behind every sounded word. 承倢. But some decisions we live with, and I am proud of the life I have created for myself under the name “Allison”, so I’ll respond to both with a measured smile so long as each syllable is given its share of respect.

I want to be recognized, not rewritten. Meet me where I exist in my fullest form, not where I am most convenient.

I am whole. Let my name be too.

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In my mid-twenties as a semi-politically aware woman (I say this as my Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree certificate stares at me from my drawer), an alarm goes off in my system whenever a new discourse within the wider ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ movement comes to life. The alarm was particularly ear-splitting when the concept of girl’s girl gained traction on the internet, and I say ear-splitting because I have a bone to pick with the popularization of this phrase.

Taken at face value, the girl’s girl is the new gold standard women should strive toward: A woman who supports and uplifts other women in a system that has historically fanned the flames of ill competition within this gender. The concept of a girl’s girl is not new, but one could argue that it was finally given a name when the phrase found fertile ground on the internet. What interests me about things, concepts, and phenomena being christened with names is that while language is used to describe what is, it simultaneously describes what isn’t. We’ll come back to this later.

Any polygraph machine would betray me if I said I did not check to see if I fit the mold of a girl’s girl when the concept took off, to make sure I was still surfing on the wave of feminism. Social media was chock-full of women creating content around the behaviors and personalities of these supposed girls, their running checklists almost identical across videos. Commonly raised points include: A girl’s girl would tell you if you had broccoli stuck in your teeth, would not feel threatened by another woman’s success, would never start drama with another woman, and so on and so forth.

An interjection: I need to clarify that my two-pronged gripe lies within the misrepresented image of girl’s girls online. No part of my analysis and opinion should be taken to be an indictment of the concept itself. I do not doubt that the concept and, by extension, the phrase, originated with good intentions, and these intentions remain valuable in some way or another. In systems where women are all too frequently pitted against each other in ways that only serve the opposite gender, even the slightest attempt to conceptualize solidarity represents progress.

Now, the gripe.

Prong one: What became sufficiently clear to me was that the mass, online understanding of what it means to be a girl’s girl is a performative one. Almost as if the biggest indicator that you are a girl’s girl is the public signalling of it all—saying the actual words “I’m a girl’s girl.” Such proclamations quickly morph into a form of moral branding—announcing to a room what can be expected of your behavior before you even set foot through the door. The snag with such moral branding is that it creates a pocket of excusable faults that, realistically, is unjustifiable: Since you have established your identity of ABC and therefore not DEF, this becomes solidified in people’s minds. After all (and this is a personal belief), there is no reason to distrust someone until they give you evidence to do so. Hence, when you inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) do DEF, it is seen as a blip instead of a betrayal of your identity.

An example? Someone who is known to be a nice person says something rude one day, and they actually mean what they said with full force. The group, instead of holding the nice person accountable for the displayed rudeness, is quick to dismiss the behavior as, “That’s not like them at all! They must be having a bad day.” I’m sure we have all witnessed scenarios like these once or twice.

The glaring problem, of course, is that saying you are one thing is very different from embodying it. Signals are not behaviors; it is through this lens that the concept of girl’s girls can skew toward performance rather than genuine action.

You might have already spotted the flaw in my argument—that is, I have no way of confirming whether every woman who presents herself on my feed is just claiming to be a girl’s girl performatively, or if they indeed embody the values of said girl—and you would be right. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that everyone who claims to be a girl’s girl also wholeheartedly embodies the values of this character. Trouble insists on inviting itself through the door in this scenario, and I cautiously enter this next part carrying my personal experience and lived observations with me.

Prong two (the thicker, more serious prong): The issue lies within the doctrines that the majority of these self-proclaimed girl’s girls are instating. Whenever I consume content of a woman claiming to be a girl’s girl, I can’t help but feel there is an undertone of I’m a girl’s girl, and if you are not, that means I am better than you. I have the moral high ground because I am always standing by to support and defend my fellow girls, and you are not. This is why language also describes what isn’t: The existence of girl’s girls implies the existence of non-girl’s girls, and one is seemingly taken to be better than the other. It is obvious which.

Fine. Say I succumb to this narrative and I want to be just as good as the girl on my screen; say I want to be better—not necessarily better than other women or non-girl’s girls, but a better woman on my own. Even then, the girl’s girls feel like an exclusive club to enter, as if I need to leave my own morals and boundaries by the door and adopt theirs before I am allowed on the floor with privileges (privileges, followed by a big question mark).

Now, what do I mean by this? Phrases like girl’s girl run the risk of being more normative than descriptive, assuming the role of a disciplinary mechanism instead of just being an identity pillar. The specific disciplinary mechanism here manifests as weaponized solidarity. Based on my observation, girl’s girls (and note that I am not generalizing) heed the logic that they support women, and the narrative seems to extend to supporting all women at all times, never mind what the facts of the matter are. So, if you happen to disagree with a scenario and choose not to stand by the woman, you are automatically disqualified from being a girl’s girl. In such cases, calling it a disagreement is inaccurate—a mere disagreement snowballs into a kind of moral betrayal, as if criticism, no matter how valid and warranted, is the very evidence that you are not worthy of the sisterhood.

There is an argument to be made that weaponized solidarity can still be a good thing given the importance of it in advancing political movements. But we are notoriously susceptible to motivated reasoning, which is the tendency to interpret information in a manner that will protect our loyalties. When the identity of girl’s girls becomes morally loaded, this bias sinks its teeth.

The priority of being a girl’s girl then becomes protecting the image of female solidarity rather than addressing the harm itself; the girl’s girl club essentially becomes ignorantly resistant to judgment. Any criticism directed at a woman risks being seen as betrayal rather than accountability, and a blindfold slowly suffocates the vision of girl’s girls as they stop holding their friends responsible for their actions, excuse toxic behaviors, and use girl code to diminish non-girl’s girls.

The challenge presents itself when the ethics of solidarity go from support to automatic allegiance. It seems that if your initial and permanent reaction is not to support women, then you are very much against them, even if you are merely critically thinking and judging a situation. Where we might have begun with ‘support women,’ we have now spiraled into ‘never question women’. Operating in this manner, the girl’s girls seem to cause more harm than good.

There is also the issue of conditional loyalty within circles like these, which I have had the unfortunate luck of witnessing in real life. While this might not manifest in every instance of girl’s girls, it is certainly well and alive in some: Support seems to only be handed out when it benefits them or when it’s transactional. The public signalling is still “I support women,” but with the invisible subtext of “as long as they support me first.”

The sisterhood of these girl’s girls, like previously mentioned, becomes an exclusive club, enacting a litmus test for belonging. Similar to other social identities, it arrives with an implicit checklist: Have the right opinions, carry the right tone, express the right support. Those who execute the script perfectly are fully embraced by other girl’s girls, while those who dare deviate from the sacred path are exiled and shamed.

Solidarity, in cases like these, is conditional upon uncritical alignment, which translates to this sub-section of feminists becoming the very thing they once stood against: Exclusive, hierarchical, and ignorant to valid criticism. All the while, this small collective remains intact and untouched because, remember, they’ve already announced to the room that they are the pinnacle example of what a woman and feminist should be! Surely, any error they make is a blip and shall be forgiven!

The central problem with girl’s girl is that it simplifies feminism into merely supporting all women. Fundamentally, no issue there; however, when you support somebody’s actions, behaviors, or morals because of their gender or some other facet of identity instead of supporting them on their merits, you are effectively reducing, if not erasing, the work they have put in. Then, there might well be men who weaponize this as a reason to further dismiss women, thinking that any support a woman garners is purely because of her gender, not because of her true capabilities. Where a phrase is supposed to propel a movement forward, it now risks setting us back.

We know some people can do bad things and make bad decisions, and we would never stand for that. Similarly, we know that some women can do bad things and make bad decisions, so why should we stand by that? Being a feminist and a good woman does not and should not entail the blind pledge of allegiance to the gender without considerations for consequences and morals. Solidarity should never be reflexive or innate; it should be intentional and thoughtful to generate ripples, if not waves.

I am not trying to hold a pitchfork and torch in front of the girl’s girls house. I am, instead, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be a girl’s girl and how we can make this aspiration attainable and accessible to all women while thrusting the wider movement forward. The strongest form of feminism is one that is least interested in advertising itself, and note that advertising is very different from informing.

The phrase girl’s girl should be an aspiration without doctrine—this is likely our best shot at moving through the world as supporters and collaborators rather than adversaries. When we start creating checklists and exclusionary criteria around being a girl’s girl is when the entire concept begins to silence some women instead of empowering all women.

While I am not one to dictate what a true girl’s girl looks like, I can surely imagine. I imagine a girl’s girl to be someone who speaks up for women when they are not in the room, who gives women the benefit of the doubt in conflicts or mistakes, who makes sure to include women in conversations, and who holds everyone equally accountable and responsible.

I have learned to trust my gut instinct more in recent years, and what it told me when girl’s girl content began appearing was that this was not a category I fit into, nor one I wanted to fit into. While the definition of feminism and what it means to be a feminist remains long contested, what I can say for certain is that it is not supposed to be an act of performance. Telling another woman that they forgot to remove the tag from their shirt or blindly standing by their wrongdoings will not accelerate the progress of feminism. Claiming to be a feminist doesn’t make you a feminist; having the curiosity and courage to speak up, ask questions, and challenge the norm does—at least partially.

The world already insists on putting women in boxes. Let’s not build any more for ourselves.

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I claw my way through the earth. I claw my way through this life. I cannot claw my way back in time.

If you were to ever catch me walking down the street—the volume of my music acceptable to my ears, my coat hugging my shoulders, my New Yorker tote hugging my coat hugging my shoulders—there is a fair chance that I am having a conversation with myself in my mind. As I write this, I sincerely hope there are others out there like me. I like to think I am sufficiently self-entertaining; there is forever a slew of thoughts firing inside of me, begging to be given attention, tiny hands bopping in the air waiting to be called on.

Recently, on one of these walks, a thought I called on went like this: If there were a day you could return to over and over again, which day would it be?

The answer came immediately like a dog’s salivation to a Pavlovian bell: 25 February 2023.

The speed with which this date raced to the forefront of my mind should have warranted a stop in my tracks, but I refuse to put my self-entertainment above public courtesy and become one of those people who grind to a halt on the pavement. And so I let my legs continue their rhythm and began dissecting the motivation behind this answer.

On a surface level, it was indisputably one of the happiest days of my life, marking a flagship event I had spearheaded that unfolded successfully (it goes without saying that the credit goes to my wider council). We seemed to have been blessed by some kind of anti-Murphy’s Law, where everything that could have gone right went right. I was surrounded by people who spent months bringing this project to life with me, as well as friends who showed up with their support, applause, and flowers. It was one of those moments where you look out into a crowd, recognize faces, and realize that your heart wasn’t built to carry this much gratitude and happiness, and that you don’t know where to put those emotions, so you shove some in the tiny pockets of your women’s pants and carry the rest in your arms until your spine begins curving.

But really, my longing to return to this date has less to do with what happened on the day itself and more with everything that ensued after 25 February 2023 was crossed off the calendar.

Up until that date, I had lived an ordinary life. Sure, I enjoy some privileges that come with my background and had my fair share of drama, but it was nothing to write home about—hence ‘ordinary’. My life was predictable and overall stable thanks to what I deem its transactional nature: If I studied hard, I got the grades; if I prepared for an interview, I got the position; if I ran for student council, I was inevitably inducted; if I planned for something, I would pull it off. I have always been able to see clearly the kind of life I would be living into the future, and rarely was I wrong in my forecasting. The scales were always balanced, which was absolutely pleasing to a Libra like me, and this balance persisted until 25 February 2023.

Like I said, on that day, our hard work had paid off, and everyone I loved was there to love me back in their own way. But that was the last day those two statements proved to be conceptually true. Very soon after the excitement around the flagship had dissipated and my life had resumed a monotonous rhythm, things began to crumble. Over what has now been exactly three years, I have been rolling downhill, stubbing parts of me against hard lessons, uncertain when the descent will plateau. Success no longer came guaranteed with hard work. I witnessed luck strategically intervene for others and just as strategically skip over me. I stood on the thin end of unreciprocated friendships and relationships. I scooped out parts of myself as an offering only to have my prayers unanswered.

Very quickly, I was casting my efforts into the ether, echoing into a cavernous abyss. What stung the most was the realization that some people in my life needed an active reason to love me. To stay in love with me. That being myself wasn’t reason enough. Through some eyes, there is a utility scale floating above my head. Through all this time, I evolved to please, thinking that my evolution would yield the transactional return of their love.

I think that in the time between 25 February 2023 and today, I have needed to evolve and adapt to varying but simultaneous circumstances, meaning I can never fully be enough for one person or one role. Not as a writer, not as a sister, not as a daughter, not as a friend, not as a lover. It took three whole years for me to come to the realization that I needed to learn how to leave, how to let go, how to remove myself from the situation if I can’t change the situation. It took three whole years for me to conclude that someone’s perception of me being inadequate is sometimes more a reflection of them than of me. It took me three years to believe that the most important thing is to be enough for myself.

And sure, maybe it took me three years to come to terms with the way life has changed, with the way life will be from here on out—just a cosmos of uncertainty and inconsistencies. But the bitterness of the leaving, be it enacted by others or myself, never fades. I still can’t entertain the idea that hard work is mangled by chance before it reaches the success line. I refuse to wrap my head around the fact that people who once loved you unconditionally can grow to demand evidence before they trust you.

The best part about 25 February 2023 is that there was still some part of me that was innocent, that believed in transactions and karma and balance. I’ll even call that version of myself naïve, goddamn it! Life was easier then! If only I could claw my way back, I would happily give up my fingernails in the process. I’d jump through all things quantum just to go back to that February.

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The red that adorns the environment does not beckon concern. It is a cause for celebration and blessings, a union of families and fortune. I find myself looking at the red from the outside, the door inaccessible to me. I see a family at the dining table fighting for the soup ladle, singing praises of grandma’s recipe; I see the younger kids sat in front of the TV, taking in the buzz and flair of the new year program; I see older cousins in the backyard with firecrackers strategically positioned in emptied beer cans. I bang at the door. No one hears me over the festivities.

This February marks yet another year of not being able to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family back home. My grandparents ask, through the unstable phone signal, why I’m not home, and I say ‘They don’t give out holidays here for what is our celebration,’ with a grimace. This much is true—it is difficult to justify taking two weeks off of work and dropping four digits on a plane ticket, so I settle for mouthing four-worded blessings into the phone.

Every Chinese New Year, I fall victim to the same sentiment: I want to be young again and to be afraid only of the most irrational things. I want to believe that the 年兽 (nián shòu; Nian beast) poses a serious threat to my grandmother’s village. I want to be laced with fear that if I washed my hair on 初一 (chū yī; New Year’s Day), I’d be washing away all my good luck for the year to come. I want to shudder at the thought that if I so much as accidentally napped during this time, I’d be characterized as lazy for the upcoming twelve months.

The world was so much bigger when I was younger. The fried chicken and chrysanthemum tea never seemed to run out from the kitchen counter of my grandmother’s house. The all-engulfing laughter would sprout legs and run down streets and blocks. The spare change would keep switching positions where the adults were sat in a circle with playing cards. The night never seemed to end as fireworks shot up into the sky in a blaze of colors, blooming bigger than life itself. The world was so much bigger when I was younger. The world is still big now, but the rational fears are bigger.

I don’t want to be afraid of tomorrow’s weather or the inevitable expiration of my visa. I don’t want to think about my parents growing old without me and my brother seeing more of the world without my commentary. I don’t want to cower before every headache and health issue that hits me like a target. I don’t want to dread the next grown-up conversation I need to have. With all these rational fears taking up real estate in my mind, there is no space for the irrational ones!—there is no space for my childhood and youth!

When I say I miss Chinese New Year, what I really mean is that I miss being home and being young—being in a place and time where I don’t have to explain myself. As much as living abroad has been my own call and has enabled me to pursue the career I have always dreamt of, it comes with the unspoken burden of constantly needing to explain myself, over and over again. I have never taken a single facet of my identity for granted; in fact, I am grateful for all of them and the doors they have opened for me, the lights in which they have allowed me to shine.

But the truth is that I am sick of explaining why I am ‘Malaysian Chinese’; why I’m not just ‘Chinese’ or, mistakenly, ‘Malay’; why my family is generally Buddhist but I personally do not subscribe to any religion; why I grew up having to learn three languages. I’m tired of differentiating between Chinese the nationality and Chinese the race; of reiterating that none of my living family has ever lived in China, but, yes, we celebrate Chinese New Year all the same. I’m exhausted from smiling perfunctorily when someone says I don’t sound Malaysian, as if my country is identified only by one accent. I’m spent from elaborating why I, as an individual with my particular background and upbringing, say ‘Happy Chinese New Year’ instead of' ‘Lunar,’ and how that isn’t an ignorant mistake of exclusion.

The policies, migrations, and inheritances that have led to who I am today cannot be compressed into small talk! My identity is not efficient and it refuses to be so! And so you see—this is why I miss Chinese New Year back home. I miss being safe from rational fears and being understood without saying a word. I miss when small talk was all about what I was going to study at university and whether I have a boyfriend yet. I miss the rusty awning of my grandparents’ house that fit in with all the red. Red doesn’t explain itself. Red isn’t afraid of anything.

Another new year rolls around. This time in the form of a stallion. I mouth four-worded blessings into the ether and look for something red in my closet.

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You are supposed to write at all times.

Even when you are not actually putting pen to paper, there should be a nagging spark going off in the crevices of your brilliant mind, begging to be realized and lauded. An original thought here, an original thought there. If not an original thought, then an age-old concept worded in an original way, a never-used before metaphor that would have your fellow reader’s jaw dragging the ground for three business days. Speaking of days, time should be no concern of yours. You should write not to the rhythm of the sun and moon but as long as the words demand to be spilled. As long as the ink remains wet.

You are supposed to own a patinated journal, the pages of which threaten to fall off the spine any day now, the pages of which are messily scribbled over with coffee stain rings, illegible to everyone but you. You are supposed to take your coffee black and your water sparkling. The barista at your neighborhood café should know you by name and your order by heart. They should know that you like sitting by the window to people-watch in between paragraphs. They should know not to interrupt you by asking if you’d like more coffee when you’re people-watching because a passerby is going to laugh with their head tilted back like they are made of poetry any second now, and you’re about to be blessed by the inspiration gods. They know to say ‘see you soon’ when you eventually walk out, more like a guarantee, less like a hope.

You are supposed to be tortured to some degree, so bothered by this one story you just can’t seem to get right, this literary itch you can’t scratch. You are supposed to spend more time talking about writing than actually writing, walking around your apartment barefoot on the phone with your friends as if the right opening sentence to your debut novel will seep through the floorboards into your body. Your apartment should be barren save for the stacks of books you bought last year but have yet to get through the first chapters of, an ever-boiling kettle, and the minimally accepted sets of utensils (two).

Okay, so I lied. You’re not supposed to do any of the above. But isn’t that the perfect image of ‘the writer’ that comes to mind? Almost as if someone idle and comfortable can’t make a good writer, or any writer at all. Happy people don’t birth Booker Prize-winning stories. It’s people who have been given the middle finger by life who write with the kind of vengeance that demands attention. Yes, you and I both know that there is no checklist of things a writer is supposed to do, no routine by which a writer is supposed to live, much less a personality and backstory a writer is supposed to have. A true writer doesn’t wait for the perfect pen and the perfect notebook and the perfect café to write. A true writer has words running through her veins! She bleeds punctuations (Oxford comma included)! She breathes metaphors!

They say that you should love writing for the pain and the gnawing at your pen, for the way you are allowed to waltz with words, and not for the aesthetic. Yet I can’t help but reach for this delusion of the perfect writer. Because if I can embody the perfect writer, have her personality, live the way she lives, then doesn’t that mean I could write better? Isn’t that the dream? To always be writing better than you currently are. To move that much closer to that best-selling list. To leave behind a printed legacy.

God damn it, do I want to do my writing squared away in a tiny New York City apartment with an inconsistent hot water supply. I want take out menus being unceremoniously squeezed through the slit under my door until they become a makeshift doorstop. I want there to be a window that leads to a fire escape where I can watch the sunset and taxis go by day after day and feel inconsequential and write about feeling inconsequential, where I can sit and smoke the writer’s block away. And god knows I hate cigarettes but I will balance them on my lips and inhale with all my lungs if it makes me a better writer. If there is something in the nicotine that bestows upon me clarity and nuance. I want an agent who calls me every other day to ask about the progress on my book and who takes me out for gossip over brunch and who gets the bill because she knows I quit my job to write and she believes that my book will be a hit when the day comes, not if the day comes. I want there to be the occasional cockroach in my kitchen so I have to roll up my sleeves and kill it fearlessly, and remind myself that morals have aesthetic, and if that creature was a butterfly, I’d be called monstrous, but because it’s a cockroach, I’m some kind of small town hero. I want to write about killing the cockroach and then call my agent and tell her about it. I want her to tell me to stop writing about cockroaches and start writing the next chapter of my book.

Isn’t it so wonderful? To not only dream about the kind of writer I want to be but to be able to lay that image down on paper? Isn’t it so tragic? That I cannot appreciate myself for the writer I am now? Perhaps that is the mark of ‘the writer.’

I am caught in the claws of the writer I want to be, not the writer I am now. I am willing to be scratched if it means I will write better. The pain tells me I am still reaching. This torture is also instruction. I will get there someday. I will keep writing between these claws.

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I don’t know when we learned to inhale around sharp things. To inhale sharply around sharp things. The body morphs into a student of damage, foresees extents of harm. Suddenly everything around you becomes a threat. Because the problem with being around something sharp like a knife is that you begin to look for other sharp things. You start to shape your body according to the edges of the tension. Eventually, it’s in and in and in, the out waiting for a turn that might never be granted.

I don’t know when I learned to mistake proximity for intimacy. If I want to be close to you, I must surely love you. And if I am always close to you, you must surely learn to love me back. If I stand long enough by the knife, it must surely dull itself on my patience. The first boy I ever loved taught me love was an endurance sport and so I trained like I’ve never won and ended up bleeding anyway. The blood was thick and the scab took forever to go away. I think some of it is still stuck under my fingernails.

Sharp isn’t always visible. Knives aren’t always metal. Sometimes it’s an inflection in a sentence. Sometimes it’s a word you’ve never used. Sometimes it’s a question loaded with an answer you won’t like. Sometimes it’s a misplaced comma in the beginning of a letter. Sometimes it’s radio static that stretches long enough for you to think your body parts are all in the wrong place. No matter what form the knife takes, we have learned one similarity—it is exceedingly brilliant at making things your fault. The blade never hated you, in fact, it was committed to you!

Your breath becoming shallow is something that goes unnoticed easily. So you get used to it. A rhythm, a waltz, a habit. Then, you are editing your laughs and hedging your needs. Swallowing whole phrases so they don’t leave your lips and fling a cut at someone else. Speaking with only half the vocabulary you were taught—the polite half. Do you hear that? You are calling it kindness and maturity as your body quivers in protest. The knife calls it an open road to being stepped on.

I don’t know if we’ll learn that the body can’t lie like we do to ourselves. It remembers every time you chose survival over expression. The palms are indented with fingernails. The teeth are no stranger to gritting. The lungs know when they’re being shorted. The body doesn’t understand excuses, it understands pressure. It understands when something sharp is hovering too close to the ribs. It doesn’t mistake tension for devotion.

Isn’t it easy, though? To live by more knife, less breath when you see pain as the admission price. Aren’t you so lucky to be standing in the glory of anything sharp at all? In a world so dull? Aren’t you the knife’s chosen one?

But you still flinch when nothing is raised. Wait for an angry entrance succeeding the slam of a door. Brace for a lash that won’t arrive. Anticipate the burn of a fire that will never be rekindled.

Knock. Knock. Hello? It’s me. You can put the knife down now. Nobody needs to know it was held against you in the first place. Nobody needs to know you were holding it too. Nobody needs to know you are putting it down now. No need for speeches or tears or dramatic exits. Just breathe radically. Unraise your shoulders. Unclench your fists. Trust that the air will meet you halfway. You will miss the sharpness, this I know, but you don’t have to bleed for access. What is meant for you already knows your name, it doesn’t have to take what is in your veins. Take up space without apologizing for the physics of it. This air is yours to take, no returns required. In and out. In then out. That’s it. That’s all. That’s all there is to it.

It doesn’t have to cut you to be real.

1. “Disappointingly, god is not a woman. Even more disappointingly, god comes in the form of an ex-boyfriend.” — i met god at a friend’s wedding

   

2. “You tell me you are exhausted from the wound I had inflicted, as if the act of stabbing did not also demand effort. On the knife sits both our fingerprints. In the river sits both our bloods.” — face up

   

3. “Daughter of the island. Daughter of my father. Never the daughter of an answering god.” — island daughter

   

4. “Your greatest achievement in life will be becoming a chartered accountant, chartered engineer, or Michelin-starred chef and marrying a girl with a great pedigree. Mine will be manipulating the paper until there is no trace of writing that ever existed on it.” — selective erasure

   

5. “You smoke in front of me and I give you the kind of look that says, If you love me, you’d put it down. Or maybe it is the kind of look that says, If you want me to keep loving you, you’d put it down. Whichever look I shot and whichever you interpreted, you looked me in the eye and took a long drag.” — put down the cigarette

   

6. “the desk is altar and hearth / I am a religious cynic / I am still made of something that wants to be heard” — lonely labor

   

7. “And in service of what do I live these years? In service of science? Philosophy? Poetry? I doubt it is anything so grand. I live in service of waking up with my body intact and my words filtered.” — 24.

   

8. “I can surrender my dreams but not my words / my happiness but not my peace / is the color orange something one can surrender / and is surrendering the same as sacrificing” — orange

   

9. “I am not a lover, I don’t need closure, but I am a writer, which means I need to get my story straight. Not the story, my story.” — playing fetch & victim

   

10. “There’s such a femininity to sadness. I wonder if it’s because of the multiple ‘s’s in the word, each one going out of its way to curve, just like how women go out of their way to make others feel better despite their own emotions.” — one-woman fountain show

    

If you’re interested in reading the full essays:

1. i met god at a friend’s wedding

2. face up

3. island daughter

4. selective erasure

5. put down the cigarette

6. lonely labor

7. 24.

8. orange

9. playing fetch & victim

10. one-woman fountain show

The humidity attacks me like a rabid creature sicced by the island.

The road home from the airport curves like it is trying to avoid the water. They want to build a light rail through my hometown. The houses have grown taller in practice but still squat low in theory. The paint either brightens or peels with commitment. Things have changed so much that they look the same. Nothing here pretends permanence; I borrow the same philosophy.

My parents’ home smells like old prayers and freshly mopped hardwood floors. The door frame remembers my height better than I do. My high school uniform hangs in my wardrobe tempting me to step back into it. I unzip my suitcase and it sounds too loud, like I will wake something that insists on staying asleep. I can see the sea from my balcony; it keeps breathing—it has never stopped for me. Pardon, sorry, forgive me, my darling—the sea is not breathing, it is seething. I ask it what it wants from me. An apology? An offering? A body to bury back into its shore?

Someone calls my name—the one that fit my mouth when I was younger, when crying came easily, when this island cried with me—and it comes out two syllables instead of three, just the way my parents had intended. Cheng Jie. There is no Allison here. I answer out of equal parts muscle memory and guilt.

Someone tells me welcome home and I say it’s good to be back. What I really want to say is, the word ‘home’ feels heavy, like it’s filled with water. This island is home. This is where the history of me was written. Where my name was given meaning and where I responded to that meaning. Where I am closer to water than to god. Where I first had my heart handed back to me in pieces. Where I first fell down then got up with gritted teeth. Where my fingers curled themselves around a pen and refused to let go without claw marks. Where I was told to talk less—who wants to hear about all of this anyway? Who wants to listen to you? God, are you listening? Can you hear me over salt and water? This is where I learned god does not cross waters for a daughter.

An island is a place that teaches you limits: Water abundant, exits few. No matter the limits as long as my tears flowed unlimitedly—as long as salt met salt. And it’s not just the sea; the air on this island knows me. It mauls at my cheek and rakes through my hair, it presses against my chest the way it did five years ago—intimate and accusatory. I wonder if the air can tell how much time has passed. I wonder if the air knows my name by two or three syllables.

And what is this taste in the air, this scent wafting from the sea? A vague mix of sentiments, to be sure; I try to decipher: Pride, regret, and longing. But which takes the lead? Which should I make decisions with? The sea does not answer and neither does god. All they do is call out every variation of my name I have ever responded to.

I left a place that teaches you how to stay; islands are good at teaching you everything that leaves must come back changed or not at all. Who wants to hear about all this anyway? Who wanted you to leave in the first place? Who beckoned you home now? Sometimes all that matters is that I came back.

Daughter of the island. Daughter of my father. Never the daughter of an answering god.

There is no way of remembering how it felt to lie in my crib
with four walls that constituted my whole world
I wonder, often, if I were to lie in it once more
would it feel more like lying in my mother’s arms
or like lying in a lidless coffin?

But I will never know
because I am standing in the bathroom
washing blood off of my bedsheets
Because I am kneeling over candlelight
painting my nails the same shade of red
Because I am scrambling wastepaper bins
for words I crossed out in my head
Because I am toeing the line of knowing
exactly who I am and nothing at all

I am holding my responsibilities and my burdens and my emotions in my two hands
calloused from washing dishes and dirty laundry that aren’t mine
I hold them against my heavy chest and push them inwards to the rungs of my ribs
My arms tremble but there is nowhere I can put them down
There is no one to share the weight with
I am terribly lonely and terrible at being alone

Oh, but I forget that I am not alone
I have my grief
My grief does not have a spine
It cannot sit beside me on the couch
It cannot stand on its two legs and move on from me
It can only melt into a puddle on the ground and pool at my feet

I have been angry since I was born
and I don’t think the anger ever left me
even though I have flown from country to country
moved from house to house
jumped from name to name —
it has just aged into grief

My grief slides up my spine, latches onto my ribs, and wraps itself around my mouth
I cannot scream for help
I cannot beg for sympathy
I cannot sing for forgiveness

My tongue is not mine
It is mutinous, it is traitorous
I dream in a tongue that is not that of my mother’s
I dream in a foreign language I cannot decipher
I dream of afternoons I will not spend and locks of hair I will not grow

I am sitting in the kitchen light
learning how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable
I am staying behind in yearbooks and old love letters
watching the people I went to school with get engaged
I am mourning the loss of the love of my life
as he builds a house I might never enter
I keep asking why my world is shaking
without realizing that I am the epicenter
I pray to god but I fear I am too late
my friends won’t pick up the phone
and there is no one left to forgive me

I keep the remaining oxygen I have in a locket around my neck
but that is the very thing that weighs me down
I shoot flare guns into the sky
and all I hear is, “It can only get better from here”
But we seem to forget that an alternative to being in rock bottom
is that you can stay there, worse: willingly

It takes everything in me to want to get out
to keep holding on to a fraying rope
I keep holding on because my best friend is halfway across the world
and I keep holding out for the day that I can drive up to his house once more
and share a bowl of rice with him on the couch
with the television running in the background
I keep holding on because I haven’t seen the northern lights or the Eiffel Tower
I keep holding on because my French is not yet fluent
and I would like to one day tell someone that I can give them peace
I keep holding on because my body was given to me by my parents
and to love it any less is a betrayal of the way they held my hands as I was learning to walk
I keep holding on because I haven’t yet adopted a black cat
and loved it on behalf of everyone who sees them as superstitiously unlucky

Oh, but the rope is thinning as I climb
I feel the weight of my mistakes inhibiting all my intents at ascension
I have a lifetime of criticisms shackled to my right ankle
I fault myself for what I am feeling as if it is a choice
I do not rationalize; I am incapable of it
I feel and I sit in that feeling
only for them to call me emotional and avoidant
without ever understanding why I felt the need to change my name

But I am just a girl
I am just a girl!
I am only twenty-two
I know nothing yet

I am just a woman
who never learned to be a girl