D2–4
(For Ain & Sarah. And Kak Lina, the best neighbour ever.)
Are you sick of me writing about Home yet? Hehe because clearly I’m not. This Home-shaped grief keeps evolving, shape-shifting, shrinking and unfolding.
This latest poem is a long time coming. I moved to KL in March 2019, with all my possessions, all my broken dreams and all my new hopes. I always referred to my KL apartment as a sanctuary because that was exactly what it was, not just for me as I lived alone for 6 months, but also when I had a housemate, and then another.
I sat them down and told them of my intentions for the house and that a home was something that the members of the household built together every single day, intentionally, mindfully, purposefully. I needed it to be a place we all came back to that was alive with calm, prayers, peace, rest, joy. For a place to be conducive for all of that, communication needed to be open, we needed to be open, we all had to be equally invested in creating this home and the culture inside it.
It was a short-lived experiment because of Covid but while we lived together, D2–4 was a sanctuary for us. Even guests who stayed with us mentioned how they felt comfortable and at peace there. I don’t know if there are many things I’m as proud of as what we managed to achieve with D2–4. ❤
A year since I moved, on a short trip back to visit my parents, borders were closed between Singapore and Malaysia. My slow-poke of a heart (in denial that this pandemic was as serious as it was then), kept paying rent while I was separated from my sanctuary and my housemates and the little community I had become a part of in KL. For a full year, I kept paying rent, until March 2021. Haha. By then, I knew the pandemic wasn’t going away anytime soon. The cases kept rising, the restrictions got stricter, I finally transferred the lease to my housemate and got movers to ship my possessions back to Singapore.
At the end of this month, my housemate is also leaving to head back home to the US. Even though we were discussing administrative matters like lease and air-con servicing and setting prices for the furniture I had bought in case anyone wanted to buy them, the grief stirred up again. A dear one prodded in jest “Some poems about sofa beds and coffee table is perhaps due.”
Of course it wasn’t about the furniture; I never got to say goodbye to my apartment, and now I won’t get to say goodbye to my housemate.
But the advice was a good one, especially to a writer/poet. How else do I make sense of things or what was lurking in my head/heart until I wrote them down on paper?
It’s not a surprise then that when I finally sat down to write, the poem came out in fragments of a single word each; I’d been holding on for too long and the sentences wouldn’t come. This latest carriage of Home-Grief joined the other carriages in my Home-Grief Train, chugging along on the tracks of my life.
Thank you D2–4 for proving to me that the home I want & dream of is possible, but mostly for giving me the courage and confidence to know that since I managed to build it once, I can inshaAllah do it again.
Home is not a place. Home is not unattainable for me. And for that, I will always be grateful.
I’m ready to let go now. 🎈
