we sat upstairs in a small japanese eatery around the corner from the mrt station. i remember the tall stools propped against warm walls, lit by a spectacular array of bulbs dangling from the ceiling above us.
sitting across from each other on a quiet wednesday evening, with only the sound of cutlery brushing against our bowls to ornament the conversation, we talked about our afternoons, about our week, about the trip i’d just returned from the month before, about the way i’d felt reliving my “home” away from “home”.
it’s strange, i told you, to touch base with somewhere so unfamiliarly familiar. my childhood city had evolved over the years, yet the chill in the air still tingled along my skin the same way. now that i was back on this sunny island of ours, watching green double-decker buses pass along the street outside the window, this venture of mine felt like a fever dream, just out of reach.
you listened and nodded gently. and then you asked me.
what’s in it for me, here? this place, that i still can’t quite call home?
i shrugged and turned the question on you instead. what’s in it for you?
your family, you said, your friends. everything you’ve ever known – this is where you grew up, after all. there’s no reason to look elsewhere.
i saw in my mind an image of a school field and a young you running across it, surrounded by companions whose faces you’ve known since childhood. how different that looked from the image of my own school field, the one dwelling in a city beyond my grasp, the one i could only admire through slits in the school gate when i returned to visit after a decade, the one whose astroturf i wondered whether i’d ever get to stroll again.
i gave you a resigned smile. you watched my gaze reorientate itself back to cleaning out the final scoops of my curry. "i don’t think you’ll be happy here", you told me at last.
and then i felt it. the pull in my chest. the clench around my throat. the well in my eyes. a fact, you stated, so flatly, so unassuming. a fact we’d both known for a while, that perhaps i’d known for a long while, yet never heard said out loud.
i don’t think i’d ever be happy here, i swallow the words.
and so i keep looking to run. to touch my soles against concrete built on different soil. to breathe air filtered through the leaves of deciduous trees that shed in the winter. to look for some semblance of a rooting or anchoring that some part of me always wanted, or perhaps never wanted at all. and so i keep dreaming, of treehouses in switzerland, of loft apartments in china, of a tiny cabin in a small town along the lakes of sweden, wondering when my lungs will stop collecting dust every time the humidity comes back around here.
Photo: Tranmautritam (2016)
Poet Bio
Home?
Singapore.
What is home to you?
Home is the feeling of comfort of being in the company of people you trust, who are present with you physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
Weiqi Chuah is a visual and verbal storyteller deeply intrigued by the workings of the world and our relationships with each other. She channels her curiosities through her work, which range from writing Second Prize winners at the 24-Hour Playwriting Competition, to directing short films exploring peculiar characters making sense of the uncertainties in their lives, to writing poems about home and the fervent search for a place of belonging.
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