perfectlyimperfect

Ini adalah sambungan kepada tulisan yang pernah dikongsikan pada September 2013 : Vanila “ Apa maksud kau kau nak pergi jauh? Aku tak faham.” “Aku dapat tawaran sambung belajar di US.” “Aku tak kisah kau nak pergi US ke, London ke, Korea Utara ke. Yang aku kisah janji kita!” Dia tunduk, diam. Aku jalan mundar-mandir. Dalam hati ini bergolak seribu rasa. “Aku sudah tolak tawaran-tawaran yang aku dapat sebab kita janji kita nak study sini saja. Sampai hati kau buat aku macam ni. Sampai hati kau khianati janji kita. Khianati aku!” “Maaf.” Lama diam. Angin yang tadi bertiup pun ikut berhenti berhembus. Yang ada hanya sayup bunyi-bunyi budak bermain dari seberang padang. Sedikit demi sedikit aku menyusun pemikiran aku agar tak tersalah bicara. Dia bukan orang yang suka-suka buat keputusan tanpa sebab munasabah. “Baiklah. Jujur aku marah, aku tak faham kenapa kau macam ni. Tapi itu kita sembang belakang. Tentang tawaran yang aku tolak tu aku boleh cuba buat rayuan. Tapi hal yang penting sek...

     It’s hot. It’s arid. The air sizzles like it will spontaneously burst into flames. From afar I can see the horizon blurred by the haze. Freakin Indonesia and their annual ritual of choking us dead.      I’m drenched, and my arms are sticky and numb from supporting my sweaty forehead when I tried to sleep the heat away but that’s now moot because I’m awake, and annoyed at the smallest things now. The rising temperature somehow lowers the baseline of tolerance. Like this one little fly that’s been bothering me while I was asleep. One. Fly. So annoyed that it was somehow able to circumnavigate the maze of flytraps that I littered across the floor and tabletops.      Usually, I’ll just wave away this measly pest. But these past few days they’ve been under my radar just from the sheer number of them. There are hundreds of them if not more. I can’t shake them off. Hence the fly traps. There’s something about this hot weather and a dead cat tha...

Have you ever missed someone in your dreams? Like you haven't seen them in the flesh for a very long time and there they are, right in front of you, so real you can feel your skin dented under the touch of their fingers. And some time at the very end you’d figure out that it is just a mind game, and very soon the illusion will end. And dreams like these hurt so much like they’re real. And doubly painful when you're dreaming your past memories. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly special memory, just you and them doing the mundanest things in places so familiar, but places you can’t ever go back because space, sometimes moves forward like time does. You can never go back to your old house because it’s no longer yours or it’s simply not there anymore. That shared bedroom you cleaned together on Sundays. The mamak you met after a hard day at work. They cannot be yours again. Even if you try your best you can tell it’s not the same thing. The sound, the air, the light, the sm...