Because I fell down thrice in childhood, twice at the roller-skating rink, once by the swings. My grandma rubbed a hard-boiled egg in concentric circles against the peony contusion, and the egg nouned so hard it became a verb. And like all good verbs told long enough at dinner parties, it became a legend.
Because in the heat, the sky splashed upwards, like a reverse swimming pool. And I didn’t know rain could caress like the assonance of precedence, of citrus, of susurration, till I was living in a temperate country 4374 miles from home.
Because, age four, I vomited wolfing down a banana split on an idyllic butterscotch Sunday. I once coughed up a cloud of fur from sneaking too many snacks from the cat’s cracker bowel. I once crayoned the bright ruby door of the lockers and married a dijon sandwich till I was king of the jungle at three. How so much of our childhood depended on the memories of others. And what we were told became truth. And what became truth became another lesson on the pitfalls of inception.
Because I thought I could stretch the same lilac sky to embrace my first home at Pasir Ris and my second home at Simei, and I made holes for air till the cling-wrap grew too hot and heavy and I wanted out. That was when I realised the stars, like slivers of parchment, were dead eyes from the past, and the ones that were watching me in Australia were not the same ones that beguiled me back home.
Because the fourth time I fell was into the black hole, its infinite event horizon. Away from a decade of fuchsia school dances and peach gum parties. The distance warped from the years untethered to the ground, as I moved closer towards the centre of ambition.
That spring, I received news of my grandmother’s fall, and on the plane before midnight, her passing. And I held up a prayer, the one I’d incubated in my chest for decades, like a hard-boiled egg to the ends of the world.
Because up until then, I had believed, the way a child believes in bumblebees and daffodils when they were first objects then colours, that, when the object of our desires had superseded the momentum of our leaving, I could kill time and return to the arms of the waiting.
