01 July 2006

Pieces of me

Ever marvelled at the wonders of the human body? Every inch is instrumental to our glorious existence, scientists say. Which to me, makes the mysterious growth of the common fibroid, even more of an oddity.

So yesterday I gladly let them take this pingpong-sized lump (so close to my heart) away.

"Would you like to see it now or later?" The sweet nurse said while anaesthetic still flowed merrily in my veins.

And there it was, chewed meat in brine, the ugliest part of me I've ever seen. (My mother said it doesn't matter how I look on the ouside if I'm beautiful on the inside. Hah. Wait till she sees this.)

Goodbye, chunk of flesh. Leaving pieces of myself here and there doesnt' hurt me because I do it all the time!

Maybe you have something of mine? Sitting on your sofa perhaps? Or on your CD rack? Bookshelf? Then again even if all I did was shake your hand, there I am in it.

And right now, I'm probably in a sewage pipe in Shanghai, running on TV or a billboard someplace, or sitting in a laundromat, but most definitely floating in brine in a biopsy lab.

09 April 2006

Many Waters

Oh, the tides. The olive branch I clung to found itself a place to nest. And now the rivers cry over me, inconsolate, every drop burning my starving lungs.

A kind stanger sings to me. She can't save me, she knows. But her voice steadies the rhythm of the waves. She sings like a mynah: of the weedy thorn tearing against my ankle, describing every prick as if it were that fateful day when she, a ten-year-old innocent, fingered her first needle.

The hostile waters holler an encore. The enemy, my loudest cheerleader.

Feet communing with sky, my thorny scar now a Mona Lisa smile. No-one has seen water ballet as strange or artful as mine.

They seem to say, with relish: Many waters cannot quench the fire of love; nor can rivers drown it.