I Tell My Mother About the Sun 

Ryan Wong, Malaysia

Ma, 

We are on an island that is loved dearly by the Sun; a gleaming jewel adorning its path along the east of the equator. For this reason, I like to believe we have some of the best sunrises and sunsets. At each dawn and dusk, the sky is a melting pot of turmeric and magnolia, its ardent, gingered hues staining the wings of birds and seeping into the cotton of clouds as the Sun turns its tired gaze towards us. They rise and fall in a tender rhythm, our island and the Sun—only ever a gaze apart. 

—— 

Ma, 

I was only a baby back then, but I still remember. The mornings where the Sun hadn’t yet fully risen and everything was covered in blue, you’d come sit beside me before going off to work, sometimes holding my hand, sometimes just looking at me and smiling. But what I remember most clearly is you leaning in to kiss my cheek, and the feeling I’d get when you would pull away each time. I wanted nothing more than to hold on to you forever, to give you all the kisses I could, but I could only clench my fingers and cry, wordless as an incomprehensible storm burbled inside me. I just didn’t know how. I still don’t. It seems the only thing I learned was how to pull away. 

I ask myself: have our roles been reversed? You the shore, and me the tide. When the house is silent at night, are you there, on the other side of your bedroom door, choking helplessly on an upset that refuses to leave you? That refuses, it seems, to leave me too? 

——

In between, the Sun is untouchable, the sovereign of its own golden dynasty. A glint in its eye, it watches over children squatting barefoot in sandy fields, plucking the grass for insects as sweat gathers behind their ears. It glares down upon anything that dares to reflect its light, be it the rims of woks shaken over a steaming fire, the greasy noodles within them or the watches on the arms of shirtless uncles, fanning themselves through the prickly kopitiam heat as they sit waiting for their lunch. 

But I’ll let you in on a secret: the Sun is a lonely creature. More lonely than you could imagine. 

What about the island? you might think. The jewel, the tenderness, the melting skies? And you would be right, for our island is just that: a pretty thing, incomparably distant and juvenile. A burning star in its own right, so full of a life that the Sun, with its imperious demeanor and fatal inclination, can never truly be close to. As humans keep their prizes sealed in glass, the Sun is wont to watch from afar, reaching out with delicate fingers but always, always hesitating to touch. 

—— 

Ma, 

To this day I still question why, of all things, you had me get into swimming. I absolutely hated you for it, and you were okay with that. Maybe it was the image of me, smiling atop a podium in some faraway country with a medal clenched between my teeth, that kept you going. That made all our fights worth it no matter how much they would hurt you. But I know now what hurt you most of all was the fact that I just didn’t try. I knew how badly you wanted me to; not because of any vicarious ambition, but because of how much you believed in me. I didn’t care, not the slightest bit. 

I was good, and you were happy, yes, but I could’ve been so much better. And you could’ve been so much happier. For every step onto the diving board was an afternoon I stood in the pool, trying to catch the Sun in my fingers. For every plunge into icy water was a day I met your eyes in the rearview mirror and swore, with my own lips, that you would never see me again after dropping me off at the swimming club. 

It was only ever a reflection, of course. 

—— 

You must understand that the Sun is at heart a gentle being, and it is because of this gentleness that it will never know the abundance of belonging. We wouldn’t be here if it was otherwise. The Sun remains as it always has; a ballerina in a burning dress, spinning in the center of a cosmic theater. All the while it holds its loneliness deep within its core, hidden under oceans of white-hot plasma as if to forget it ever existed—a Jupiter-sized bubble housing a deathless, yearning winter. 

But here’s the thing. Loneliness is a cavern, a hunger that begs to be sated. It is easy to ignore at first, but as time goes by it festers into an aching rot. Only then is it unbearable. In five billion years or so, it will kill the Sun, and we will be taken with it. For the first time in its life as it approaches the end, the Sun will let itself be selfish. It will swell to an incredible size, coming close enough to kiss the faces of its three closest children. And it will stay like that, frozen, cherishing this last moment before destroying itself and everything around it in bursts of brilliant, unbridled chaos. Then it is free. 

—— 

Ma, 

You once asked me after a lesson how to write my name in Chinese. I showed it to you, tracing the characters 子, child, and 轩, pavilion, in the air stroke by stroke. You stopped me halfway through 轩, taking hold of my finger. “Héng before shù,” you said, drawing a line from left to right before splitting it down the middle. “Chinese is all about order.” And I thought to myself: Order is in half my name. A building to hide from the Sun in, that’s me! 

I realize now that when you asked me for my name, I didn’t give you all of it. Specifically, my surname. The name you didn’t give me. I would always have the most trouble writing it; 黄 has the most strokes, after all. 黄—the color of daffodils, poison frogs, royalty, and the Sun. Back then, I was already living up to my name, and doing it pretty damn well at that. Because 轩, the last character, was always hidden behind 子. The only thing that separated order from the Sun was a child; a bridge between two worlds that could never coexist. 

I wonder if somewhere along the way, I made that same mistake. The Chinese tutor always said that if you got your strokes wrong, to erase the entire thing and start over. The swim coach would say the same thing, holding my arm like a brandished sword. “It doesn’t matter how tall or strong you are. If your stroke is wrong, you will never reach the other side.” 

My entire life has been about these strokes, yet I must’ve still gone wrong somehow—closing the door before putting down my things, holding my breath for two pulls instead of three—and you weren’t there to take my hand, to show me how to do it right. But I don’t want to start over or reach the other side. I just want myself back. I just want to coexist. 

—— 

物以类聚，人以群分。I know all this because I am lonely too. In a place where the Sun shines brightest, one sorrowful mirror looks upon another, and I will wander these fields like a hungry ghost until all that remains is darkness. 

I don’t know how else to tell you this, Ma. How, like the Sun, I carry a loneliness within myself. Some days it is a cold storm that has frozen at the edges—a pearl rolling around the hollows of my chest. Most days, it is much subtler. A table with no chairs. Muffled static. A photograph of everyone you’ve ever loved and you, standing in the center with your back turned. This is the loneliness I have come to know like the back of my hand: a tacit absence, shrouding the body and clinging to the skin like steam. A closed lid over a slow-boiling pot. 

And yet… Lately I have felt something begin to change, and it terrifies me as much as it fills me with hope. Mornings in the kitchen making breakfast side by side, sitting at the dinner table as you tell me about your day—it is at times like these that I feel a sliver of warmth, coiling around my finger like a wedding ring, a small promise of eternity. It slips through the cracks and for a moment I am a child again, the half of myself I’ve let the waves wash away. You laugh, and it is like the glint of some treasure buried deep inside me. I’ve never been strong, not like you, but I will dig and dig until I no longer have it in me to pull away. Until the warmth goes past my shoulders and over my head; a pool, a grave to die peacefully in. 

When the day comes, it will be me reaching for you instead, and we will walk, hand in hand, back to how we used to be. The Sun, as it watches, will see nothing but a mother and her child, a lighthouse and its jewel, radiant enough for the both of them. 

—— 

Ma, 

The only difference between ‘sun’ and ‘son’ is a lid over the middle; a misplaced stroke. Until it is off, look up to the sky every now and then, and know that I am looking right back at you.

Ryan Wong is a poet and writer presented based in Penang, Malaysia.