october after

when was the last time i said goodbye? i learnt as a child, when mom cried at grandpa's wake. years later, i returned to the cemetery for my uncle's burial. i stood, numbed in grief when cousin's body was brought to mandai last october. my aunts lean with their hands on the glass which separate our lives from his'. i never forget the wails that pierced the air, when his coffin moved to the furnance, never to be seen again. at sixteen, blackie was hauled to the pound. and no one told me so. i promised not to let bobby undergo the same fate. he lived his last life, riddled with cataract & paw cancer. at twenty-four, i put bobby to sleep. he never knew why. i held bobby tight even as he lay shocked...the whines...his cry... asking, why? at twenty-four, i wept bitterly as bobby laid limp on my arms. i allowed my own friend to die.

i visited my grandma who lived alone. a week before i left for melbourne. i remembered how she waved her wrinkled hands from the fifth floor even as her tired eyes strained to see me go. i walked and left a part of my soul behind...a trail re-opened within my heart to retrieve our past when she walked the kampung dirt road at six in the morning and boarded the schoolbus with me. the empty lessons went but she waited patiently in the canteen as i finished my paltry food and carried me home.

a different kind of death and parting lies ahead. eight years in waiting... like late autumn leaves falling, near the edge of winter. every leaf has a life and story. a single chair sits in the corner of this poem. behind, a setting sun. it waits for meaning. an unmarked hour, another chance, to say goodbye.