What a treat it was to come home again ! each weekend

freed from need to entreaty egress, ingress, the scarification

of waiting at the gate every night for love or its proximate

arrival: no, weekends were abandonment’s ceasefire, after

five days of school and unconditional grandpama coddling

the sanctioned right of return to that own small room, to the

sistermaking whimpers, to ‘70s pubes on well-wound

VHS in the hidden drawer behind the magic wand, to long

hours alone with matches and flammable newsprint. Eating

watermelon in pearls and heels and clipped-on studs, just to

understand the heft of another body’s mystery, just to try

to see how this meant being treated differently, how

to get the red stains out before rush hour ended. Reagan

rebuking the Evil Empire (Vader’s in Russia?), white Lotus

Esprit floating by in the flood (Bond’s in Toa Payoh?),

a thirteen-floor drop for fruit peel and poor grade report

(talks too much in class!) to long suffering grass, the child

being farther to regret. Not refuge exactly but retreat, an

undergrounding of overkeen senses, hallucinating safety.

Testing then, as now, howhat it is to be the one to decide

when to answer the call. What to admit or withdraw.