It was school vacation, my daughter skiing with her father,

	my husband in board meetings,

mynah birds drumming on the window panes, autumn gifts,

          my first ex. in a condo in Kuantan,

(true friendships don’t crowd us, they are not a phrasebook.)
But it was just the grief I felt in his apartment, a stopover,

	sufficient to release claustrophobic

stanzas, one by one, a sorrow, unclenching into silence.

	Shopping at East Coast Mall, the lap pool,

gymnasium, the trees peeling outside. I could call it respite—
forgiveness. I was at odds with bureaucracy, the clinics

	who treat psychiatrics like offenders,

gagging them with psychotropic drugs, they surfaced,

	gas-filled whales buoyed into my office

while Indonesian boats sank their cargo, politicians waged.
I could write more—hours spent with innocent refugees

	tried by narrow halls, waiting for visas,

medical assessments or suicide. I could detail the security

	frauds, bribery, Typhoid, children turned

in the hands of frustrated men like outdated dictionaries.
Or I could mention the Rohingya Burmese father of four

	closing the door, in haste, unlocking

suitcases to scribble down their UNHCR-ID on the back

	of some food coupon, the sound of a hose

filling buckets of water for the day’s quota, his exquisite wife.
Perhaps, I should confess how prohibited I felt, ferrying

	back to a 5* hotel in evening’s pollution,

encrusted lights of traffic. I had no appetite for dinners,

	swimming laps, late, without purpose.

Hibiscus swishes calmed my traitorous lungs— how I forgot

					      everything I knew.