Meditations on Separation | QLRS Vol. 25 No. 3 Jul 2026

And this is how we squandered away February.
Where the air was thick in blood, soft as a tether.

And we were hardly together.
Watched Lancang Kuning and someone coined the term

"Umbilical noose" and thought they'd solved
a generational crisis. By then,

We were at the mercy of many things.
The dividends in B-reels this country has paid across the border.

And for you, the last audition before
Shaw Theatre's relocation to Kuala Lumpur.

When I was in the middle of the field, blood running
between my thighs in a stench of copper and dead

Flesh, in a pain that awaited love's confirmation, I learnt
there were some words that were better left unknown,

Abandoned in a distant lexicon.
Did art imitate life?

In Lancang Kuning, Telani nearly died, outstripped
for the flesh in her womb,

And I thought I could see through the river of blood
till December. Every godawful argument and thinly-veiled disdain,

Into an ocean in which we were islands
within small islands adrift of our archipelagos.

Umbilical noose because, between art and life, how often
we confused the living for the dead.

Umbilical noose, because the women who dared
ask questions were already dead. Because,

Somewhere, there exists a venn diagram
between a woman, a womb and a wound where love should be.

When the lilies were wilting with a closed casket
the size of a glove compartment, a small part of you would have

Wished it had been me. In a flood, who knew
which islands sink and which tectonite through the currents?

That year, February came and went
like a ghost I wish I'd known.

And you mourned the loss of an acting career and heir,
and as with all generational crises, I blamed the loss on a curse,

Bad fortune, instead of a man who arrived
hours too late from his audition.

We once shared a moment
watching films in summer rain,

The scion of a cigarette between his teeth
while fishing for change beneath his tent.

When my lips turned blue,
the way Telani's did,

You told me there was one thing I was good for
but I was no good for it.

I wished you'd found me
in the middle of the field before

I became so good at playing dead.