here i am, exhausted but can't seem to go back to sleep, early on a saturday morning. i'm not really certain for what reason, but it's as if my heart woken me up and my mind tells me to get up and get an early start of the day.
an early start? to be honest, i've never been the morning fresh air, neither the early bird kinda person. saturdays and sundays would usually be the only days when i can repay my sleeping debt and indulge myself in the 'art' of dozing off.
but now, here i am, just finished reading Yiyun-Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers(will most definitely re-read it!), and seems to run out of things to do. so decided to actually blog for once. i know, my post would usually be of lousy poems that seems incomprehensible,and those who actually bothers to read them must suffer from chain-yawning and rapid-blinking of drowsy eyes syndrome, but it just seems easier for me to express myself in stanzas rather than sentences.
my itunes is humming Damien Rice's 'Sleep, don't weep', but drops of moisture are falling onto my folded legs....
i can't really remember the last time i cried. i didn't even shed a tear when i received the sullen phone call from my mom last week. it felt awkward for me, not being able to feel and express grief when i was suppose to be flooded by it. but still.... i guess in a way, death doesn't really bothers me anymore. i think the last time i did really shed tears was during the four days i spend at home after the lunar new year. home, for numerous reasons, always makes me cry.
i remember stepping into the room my sister now share with her three children, it was the first time ever since they've shifted there. i was alone and the first thing i saw was big framed wedding photos.... then i saw the pile of books and paper mounting the study tables at the corner, the familiar pillows on the bed, and the rows of family portraits on sidetable. i was suddenly flooded by emotions and burst out in tears....
later time the same day, my sister drove me and the kids over to see brother Liang as it was the mid of the lunar month. as we walked into the cold mosaiced hall facing walls of small wooden stands with names engraved on them, my sister stood in front of us, her hands together, eyes closed, on her knees and lips whispered. my niece bended beside her and did the same thing. i knelt down & put my hands around my nephew, holding each of his tiny hands together, i told him to close his eyes. but they stayed open. "Papa..." he mumbled, as one of his hands broke free from mine and pointed towards a certain part of the wall. i felt a huge lump in my throat, but i held myself together.
then when my sister went downstairs to talk to the care takers of the place, i held my nephew in my arms and stood infront of the wall. my nephew just stared at it, long and hard, his eyes glistening as usual. words started to flow out of me as my whisper echoed in the cold hall. not my words, but merely the ones describing what i could see in the little boy's eyes. the same eyes that stared at me with thousands of questions as i held his then very tiny and shaken hands to sprinkle fresh dirt onto the casket a few months ago. tears were flooding the place, but couldn't seem to control myself anymore.
i guess emotions, sadness, it builds up. and without realising, my capacity for it had expanded.
