'Headlong'

Headlong, I am revisiting:

I flicked open peanuts, fingers numb. The strange gravity pulling pushing inside, as blood rushes to make me systemic against predators. It is the eve of a wedding and I am seated at a table covered with ricepaper, flicking open, then eating, peanuts; I've made a mountain from the shells and I can't seem to stop the automation. I laugh when I'm expected to. I laugh at drunken jokes, at how atrocious one of my uncles is, at myself, and how everything fits and feels like a warm glove, over what was not, before.

It is dark and I stagger out into the carpark for my vehicle, but not without vomiting a few steps after. As in "the dike burst, and the floodwaters vomited forth." I am alone in the lot, head down, a pattern in it; a rushing of thoughts--one of them being: this is a circle: regretting then indulging; indulging then regretting. It is my last working day at the factory in Kamunting.

I recall telling my friends (who would then worry), "I'm going to ride home in my spaceship!!" in a state of jest only I can appreciate, and smile, as the ignition starts.

I am, of all things, dancing. Or trying to dance, but am clouded about how well I'm actually doing it. In the end I just move, each atom of my makeup screaming pulsating; the surrounding environment the stimulation. I ache all over the next morning, underarms with gin blossoms.

I turn, and he tells me: "For me and mine," to which we clink cups and finish what remained of our beers, "that something as simple (and unoriginal) as 'in her haze she reciprocated when his mouth sought hers', was a Juncture for me," he blurts on, after. He is silent for the while and I smile, appreciating the irony that past and present is one; that it helps ease unforgiveness on his part, at least for the moment. He will never forget her, his first love.

I am in the back of a car, missing the sensation of cheek against nape.

Drunk, trying to construct clumsily a Babel with my poor words as adobe: "Today when you left me, your shadow, at home--the feeling of it was so strong that it was violently eating me, at around ten p.m. I was; am nowhere. And now, reduced to nothing," I found if difficult, gave up, saved the draft and slept.

From behind me beacon lights from a cruising by patrol car force me to realize that the party had been reduced to a pantomime. And while still unintentionally adhering to the paradigm of a performer, I try to finish 'Wonderwall' as softly as I can, only to forget what came next in the song...

( _")