something.

i came of age post- everything and childhood often feels like hibernation, looking up to bigger heads resting on longer legs with bigger breasts and bigger words and one day you will be and become. and one day you will not look at the world from this windowpane and see tim-tam the bully punch holes into the little children and go to help but instead smack your head on the glass. one day you will walk out the front door like mama does every morning and you will go to Work. one day you will wear oven mitts like baba and cook porridge in the morning before driving the children you will birth to school. and at school the children will sit. they will nap. they will learn and look and wait. and one day they will be.

be. be. be. be. beep. beep. beep.

when you take the MTR in hong kong and when you are crossing across stations and being carried escalator-wise to the next level and the next level and resting your stiff hand on the sidebar you hear a beep. beep. beep. and it takes away all other noise and it slows down all other time and there is only one battle in sight and it is with your eyelids and they want to go down. there is only one battle and it is with your eyelids.

the eyelids got the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

what did you do today at work? oh, i can't even remember, and where is my bed? where is my bed? and why don't you let me rest my eyes before i talk to you? i say. and the only things that worked today were my eyeballs and eyelids and i think i have arthritis in my fingers. i think i have a rheumatism. you do? i think i do, mummy, i think i do! and mummy ran to her computer desk and logged online and ran back and stood in the doorjamb and said. i think you do! and cancer too!

and she turned off my lights for fear of radiation and ran far away to her bedroom and i lay there in the night without my covers tucked under me and without my nursery rhymes read to me and i thought and i said,

"i came of age post- everything."

and it felt like the slow din dark smog on schoolday mornings and our bus driver squinting slowly up the hill, and it felt like my head was turning to metal, hanging heavily over my neck, and it felt like being permeated, it felt like being overcome, by liquid like some funny osmosis to leave me darker and heavier and slower and quieter and

in the morning i sit. and in the day i learn and at night i eat. and all the time i look. and let me tell you my skills, well i am good on the intake. do you know that some like it hot was rated the #1 comedy of all time by the american film institute? and do you know that the yardbirds gave us more rock n roll legends than any other band? and do you know that everything you feel is birthed in the secretion of hormones?

but my parents are not impressed.

baba says: pop culture consumer and never creator
and mama says: don't obsess over their success! they're already successful! look at yourself.

and true. in steinbeck and hardy and shakespeare and twain i read behind my windowpane of runners-away and cultivators and fighters and murderers and their books are a gerund-overload and their books are a rhythmic overload and is and am and are and -ing and go and live and hurt and sweat. but i don't think i can care to care about the thought i was beginning to express.

and i all i could feel was, one day one day i will be.