Your eyes, Honey-gold and Charcoal

Natalie Chan, Malaysia

I. Rigor Mortis 

I hated visiting my great grandmother as a child. I was young — about 6 or 7, and I would come to see her once a week. My hands, smooth and weightless, would grip onto a cloth — black spotted, and dip it into a bucket of water. The string would get caught in my fingernails, and the cloth — now lukewarm, almost cold — would leave rivulets of water down my skirt. 

And someone would lift me up by the bottom of my forearms. They would laugh about something, or another — I could pick out bits and pieces of our Eastern-Chinese dialect; “our” used loosely. It’s meant to be mine. It’s not. “Small” “Clumsy” “Soon” (angry-sounding, then. The kind of laughter that filled a bubble. Red-hot.) I would tower above her, my tai-po, and I would swallow my fear and let it get stuck in the back of my throat. She looked almost mechanical. Her skin would sop into her bones like dried plums, and her teeth would be grey and brown and yellow — barely sticking to her gums, inky blotches of cavities crawling up her front teeth. Her bones would crack whenever she stretched her long, skinny fingers, and her hands and wrists and shoulders would be painted with dots — black and brown, as if she was burning from the inside-out. 

She hadn’t died, then. But the room, stubbornly four-cornered, had reeked of death. Wisps of smoke, thick and hazy, would flutter impatiently from the front door. The chatter, albeit loud, still left most of the room feeling monotonously empty. All I could hear, held above her, was the faint buzz of mosquitoes whirring from the bed frame.

It seemed to me that she was rotting away, reclaiming the earth; but she wasn’t. She still breathed. Her chest would shrivel up at every breath. Her ribcage would pull against skin, tight and malleable like plastic wrap, and she would heave, just slightly. The faintest huff of air — ice-cold. And as I moved closer to press the cloth against her ankles, bone sticking through the rough material, she would open her eyes. Slowly. Her eyelids would creak open, dull yellow gunk sticking to her lashes, and she would stare at the ceiling. And she would stare at me. 

It would be empty. Not devoid of emotion, per se. Sometimes there would be anger, or guilt, or a keen sense of nostalgia. But through my eyes, she would look into the glossy reflection of my irises, and stare into her own. And she would utter, hoarse and strangled—

“Who are You?” 

I would always answer. She would nod, and she would drift off yet again; stare into the shallow pool of my eyes, searching for a shred of closure I would never be able to give. She would ghost her fingers, wet and bony, over mine — and through my arms, she would grapple for something she doesn’t remember of in the dark. 

She passed in November. That night, I fell asleep staring at my reflection in the mirror.

II. Icarus

When I was in 6th grade, I had to get stitches, 4 of them, on the back of my head. I leaned back on a chair and collapsed head-first onto my father’s prized award cabinet. There had been pieces of glass tangled in my hair, they said. Needed to get the wound sewn up. Just 4 would do. Watch your child — if this happens again it could cost them their life. 

No one ever thinks about what would happen if they lean back too far. If you crash into something and bleed out in the backseat of your mother’s Toyota. You just lean back, and you enjoy the thrill, and you see the world from a 60 degree angle. And you feel your heart racing. And you feel your feet leaving the ground. But you feel yourself falling, when you do. And it’s too late to stop then, when you do. 

Some days, I still rub my fingers over the plastic mold of the stitches. Feel the bumps and scratches along the edges. And I think about what could’ve happened. And I think about what will. I’ll kick back on my chair, right in front of my book-shelf, and I’ll lean back — all the way. And I’ll get a pungent taste of blood on the tip of my tongue, metallic as it is sweet, and I’ll go further. 

It’s those days where I feel most like I’m drowning. I can almost feel it prickling under my skin — legs swept under by the tidal waves, I plunge into a whirlpool underwater. My feet are caught in the midst of corals — and water fills up my lungs. It’s a festival of sensory deprivation. I feel full with death yet empty with life. Jovial. Salt climbs up my nose and gives me a sharp twinge of pain under my tongue. I hold my breath but I keep breathing regardless. There’s water in my stomach and my throat and my eyes and my nose and my mouth. I feel more content than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I cry. 

And I’ll be swept up on shore. Exhausted and weaker than ever. I’m denied the privilege of letting go of my earthly mortality. So I continue leaning back on my chair — testing its limits. Spending my whole life hunting down a dream that isn’t and was never even mine. 

III. Hunger 

My earliest memory was about 6 months after my birth. My family held a baby shower; invited all our relatives to witness the spectacle. So my parents laid out this carpet, dust caught in the edges of the reddish-bluish woolen fibres. Worn with old age. It was an heirloom, they said. Unceremoniously cramped between a broken picture frame and seven cartons of bottled water in the storage room. Only used when Uncle Ma and Auntie Yang visited. So anyway, they would say, it’s a family heirloom, and it’s kept in the hall. They grieve upon it everyday. Their great-grandfather was a treasure to them all. 

There were three objects — a toy, a brush, and a dollar. They laid them down by Ye-ye’s shrine. Then, they waited. As if this had some significant meaning behind it all. As if I had meant anything at all. The room had frozen — pin drop silence. My father clasped his hands together, fingers digging holes into his knuckles. And when I had made my choice he had picked me up and spun me around and smiled. The first time. The last.

It was such an odd thing — I realised. I’ll often pull back, and find the moment leaking through the crevices between my fingers. It’ll melt through my palms, golden and grey with the dimmed pink-maroon of nostalgia. And I would find myself running. I would always run. I would try to outrun a fate that’s already entangled itself, fervent vines, around my arms. Skin and bone. And I would reach that ravine — find the rocks pushing off the edge. 

I would wake up. At the end of the day, it would just be me. The drowned girl — the small fish in a big pond. Eaten and spat out as a pile of bones over and over. Sculpted into Zeus and Prometheus — the punisher in the same breath as she is the punished. Doomed to an eternity of breathtaking mediocrity. I keep running. 

IV. Phantasm 

It’s 3 a.m. The waiting lounge at the airport is stagnant. Freezing with the sheer loneliness of it all. It’s filled to the brim with people, flickering back and forth from one place to another, And yet. The silence is staggering. The midnight sky is visible from the glass dome that shields the building. It’s dark. Empty of the morning glow that seeps in through the clouds like the bottom of an aquarium. I sip my coffee. 

“Would you do it?” 

I turn over. His head hangs low. He stares at the floor like there’s something of interest in those 4x4 squares of concrete. “Do what?”

“Stay. If I told you to.” 

The receptionist announces the number stamped neatly on the back of my ticket. The passengers shuffle through their bags and make their way across the hall. It’s larger than life. There’s something oddly tranquil about it — the sensation of insignificance. I fold my jacket neatly and sit it on my lap. I look ahead. “Yes. But you wouldn’t. You would never.” 

He laughs, loud and boisterous, sickeningly empty. There’s a smile on his face when he kisses me. And he looks me in the eyes, sweet as honey. In them, I see the same, rotting emptiness as I did at 6 years old, hanging above my tai po. He looks right through me, and kisses me again. 

*tai po: 太婆, great-grandmother in chinese

Natalie is a 16 year old Malaysian student that loves writing and reading any form of literature that uses verisimilitude, standing by the fact that there's nothing more poetic than the simple things around us. There's nothing better to her than having a cathartic, explosive writing session at 3 a.m. caused by hours of listening to her Mitski playlist on repeat.