By Anna Griffin

It was strange the way our bodies could betray us, I thought, as soon as Elena had left the washroom. I stood for a moment, stunned by what had happened. The swinging door settled to a close. I ran my hands under water but felt that Elena's blood was still on them.

Minutes earlier, I'd gone to the cafe's bathroom and found a young girl, her body twisted before a full-length mirror and a crimson stain blooming on the seat of her beige shorts. Her head snapped up when I'd entered, her face pinkening to match the shade of the damp paper towel she pressed against her shorts.

I asked if she needed help, and she reluctantly nodded her head. When I approached, I saw that she was shaking.

"Is this your first time?" I asked gently. She shook her head but said nothing further.

I assured her that things would be okay, I'd stained my pants numerous times, she needn't be worried. It was true. My bleeding had once been so heavy, I'd kept a thick, black hoodie with me in case I needed to wrap it around my waist.

I instructed the girl to go into a cubicle and hand me her shorts. I'd get the blood out, I told her. She did so, passing the shorts underneath the stall door. They still emanated her body's warmth.

"My name is Hazel, by the way," I said. There was no reply from the stall.

I blotted the redness on both sides of the fabric with soapy, wet paper towels until the spot was no more, then ran the shorts under the hand dryer.

When I gave them back to her, along with a pad from my bag, I said, "You can hardly tell."

She eventually stepped out from the stall, her eyes cast to the floor, and held up a typed message on her phone.

She'd written, I'm Elena. Thank you for your help. I didn't know what to do.

I understood then that, for whatever reason, she did not speak. And in that realisation, I saw our histories mapped onto one another, aligned like a butterfly's wings pressed together.

"Don't worry about it," I responded.

She tentatively adjusted her crossbody bag so that it covered the back of her shorts. There was a crocheted strawberry keychain dangling from the bag's strap.

I'd wanted to offer more, ask if she needed anything else, but she'd left swiftly, almost running out of the bathroom.

I finished washing my hands and looked at my face in the mirror, as though seeing myself with new clarity. I usually avoided looking at myself in public. It felt both vulnerable and self-indulgent. It was difficult to accept my body. I feared seeing my flaws confirmed in reflection.

This time, however, I met my own gaze. Yet still I refused to see myself. In my visage, instead of my 36 years, I saw Elena's expression. Her flushed brow. The embarrassment of bleeding and being seen. Wide, unsure eyes. Reluctance to ask for help. Parted lips from which no sound came forth.

As a child, I'd not been able to speak in certain situations. There was nothing physically wrong. I had a voice. And I spoke freely with certain people. But oftentimes I was unable to utter any sound in public.

Complex formulas, I believed now, had determined when I spoke. The inputs were all of life. The environment, sounds, smells, temperature, light. The number of people present, their distribution in space, who specifically was present, what they said or did, or had said or done in the past. Even the clothes on my body impacted the degree to which I could communicate.

Back then, individuals had been filed into one of two lists: those I could trust to be myself around, and those I could not. There were people in my family with whom I never breathed a word. My grandfather, who'd died suddenly when I was 10, never heard my voice.

I'd often contemplated where these instincts to inhibit myself originated. Were they genetic or steadily learnt, inherent in me or acquired? My parents had done their best with me. But I could always read the frustration on their faces.

I left the bathroom and walked from the cafe into the park. The sky was blue with feathery cirrus clouds. I stretched my arms toward them, mirroring the palm trees that seemed to lean over the Singapore Strait. It was a Saturday, and many people were enjoying the park. I strolled past a couple with a pram, some teens playing frisbee, a caregiver pushing a man in a wheelchair, a jogger, a dog walker. But I could only think of Elena. I knew she must have rushed past these same things, not seeing anything clearly in her self-consciousness. Would she not dwell in isolation, I hoped.

As I ambled along the turquoise waters, countless memories simmered at the surface of my mind. When I started schooling, I'd not been able to respond during roll call, raise my hand, or speak to anyone in school, not my teachers or my peers. I'd had friends, though I cannot remember now how I made them. I supposed things were simpler then. Friendships were established by sitting next to a person or sharing a coloured pencil. Reciprocation was not as important as kindness.

Though I'd had friends around me, I struggled profoundly to make myself understood. Once, because I could not ask to use the restroom, I soiled myself and secretly flushed my underwear down the toilet. Presentations of any kind were nightmares. The stress of them made me nauseated; over my vision a haze would fall, and I'd stand paralysed as though in a dream where situations unfolded before me but I could not participate. In sports or at the playground, I was sometimes too afraid to join the group, nervous I'd do something to embarrass myself. I could not bear to order food. The choices were too overwhelming. I was sure my selection would be scrutinised. My classmates had been eager to help me as best they could, speaking on my behalf, or reminding me that I could use hand signals. But for many years this inability to communicate in typical ways had filled me with worry and shame. Otherness.

The late afternoon was balmy, and I was sweating as I walked the park. I rested on a bench in the shade of an expansive tree. Its long branches seemed a kaleidoscopic embrace. This was something I'd experienced since I was a child: a sort of intimate kinship with living things apart from humans, or even with non-living things.

As a lighting designer, I'd chosen to work with materials and objects that, once thoughtfully arranged, could come alive. Lighting was a structure, a language. It spoke to me in ways humans never had. Perhaps I'd not chosen it so much as it had chosen me.

Whenever I felt a sense of unbelonging, I took some comfort in the fact that humans were such a small percentage of the earth. I'd once read that we were a mere 0.01 percent of earth's biomass, whereas plants made up over eighty percent of the total. In a world with material proportions such as this, what did it mean to be lonely?

But of course, that reasoning only lasted so long. I could not deny the importance of human connection. Not only its importance, but its essentiality. I admitted that I had felt intensely lonely in recent months. Some of my old habits had strangely reappeared. I'd struggled to speak during a meeting with a client, stumbling over my words. I'd frozen during a dinner with some old friends from university; when Glenda had asked me if I was dating anyone, I couldn't vocalise anything. I'd only been able to manage a weak smile. Later that night, I'd returned home and cried in the shower with an unexplainable grief and slumped into bed only to be met with a text message from Glenda: I hope you're doing okay. The subtext was clear. I can see that you're not.

Just then, I felt an ant crawl upon my leg. Her amber body was translucent. I wondered where she'd come from, why she'd wandered from her community. Ants usually moved in an orderly line, following scent trails marked by the ones who'd gone before. I peered down and saw that a train of her fellow ants was nearby, centimetres from my feet. The ants ran in opposite directions along the same line. As they approached each other, they paused in greeting, their antennae waving excitedly. Hello, this is what I know, they seemed to say to each other, before scurrying on.

I scooped up the stray ant with a leaf and shifted her back to the line. She assimilated so seamlessly, I could no longer identify her.

I collected my things, thanked the tree and the ants for their company, and journeyed back through the park, toward my neighbourhood.

On the sidewalk, I passed people throwing joss paper into metal bins set aflame, lighting joss sticks and red candles, and offering fruit, rice, sweets, and kueh. It was early September, coinciding with the tail end of the Hungry Ghost Festival. Bits of singed paper floated through the smoky air.

I saw a woman toss paper into the fire and a man bend down to offer prayers. They reminded me of my own parents, who would be moving through these rituals too in another part of the island.

As I walked by, I heard the man wish peace, happiness, and success to the wandering spirits from the underworld. He addressed them as dear brothers.

Rather suddenly, anger welled up within me. I coveted his prayers. I couldn't help but think about the wandering souls who were actually living. Those who were lost and lonely and still treading firmly on earth. I wanted to ask whether anyone would intercede for us.

I reached my apartment block and took the stairs to my home on the third floor. The flat was quiet when I entered.

"Yesenia?" I called. "Are you here?"

There was no response. My housemate, Yesenia, sometimes worked on weekends. We'd met many years back while my team had been completing a lighting redesign for a boutique hotel where she worked as a customer service manager. She was Filipina and had the warmth and playfulness to coax me out of my shell, even when I didn't think I'd budge.

Yesenia made our apartment more colourful, literally. Often, things would randomly materialise in our living room. A large ceramic vase she'd salvaged from the community discard pile downstairs, raw silk pillows in sienna and olive, intricate wood carvings from her travels through Thailand, a handwoven table runner from Sarawak. And most recently, a whimsical painting by a Filipino artist that she wouldn't stop gushing over – there were an incredible number of eyeballs in the painting. I welcomed her eclectic touches. It was Southeast Asia funnelled to our living room.

My childhood home, in comparison, was simple with very few adornments. My parents were practical people. They kept the home relatively neat but thought little about overall design, which meant that there were odd stacks of books here and there. Little mountains of electronics, file folders, clothing, and tins of snacks. There was no art on the faded walls, only stiff photographs of our family in various permutations, our hands resting uncomfortably on one another's shoulders and arms as the photographer had instructed. The only times we touched were frozen on the wall.

I went to my room, removing the clothes that had seen blood, sweat, and smoke that afternoon. I stood before the mirror and observed myself with apprehension. This time, I didn't see the young girl from the bathroom, but I saw my own body. I unclipped my straight hair and stared at the greying strands. I saw the years all over my skin. Persistent scars. Shadows under my breasts as they tended earthward. A dark, bruise-like spot where I'd badly scraped my elbow in a fall. Pale stretch marks serpentining across my thighs. I forced my shoulders back—my stooped spine, a reminder of my need to hide myself.

I threw on some shorts and an old, oversized shirt and ambled to the kitchen, switching on lights as I went. I thought I'd unwind by cooking dinner and perhaps settle in with a good movie to distract me from myself. I splayed ingredients onto the counter. They were meagre in every sense of the word. I'd make do with rice porridge, I accepted.

I started the rice and rummaged in the cabinet for some peanuts. Then, I heard a faint melody that grew louder. The door opened, and Yesenia waltzed in, singing.

"Hello, hello," she greeted, her arms full of bags. I went over to help.

"The hotel had an event today, so I dabao'd the leftovers," she explained. "Oh, are you cooking?" she asked, eyeing me.

"Sort of. Not really," I answered. "Just clearing the fridge. Making some porridge."

"Don't do that," she said, as she walked toward her room. "Let's eat the leftovers. There's plenty," she called.

She re-emerged in the kitchen and revealed the contents of the bags. Pineapple fried rice, green curry, papaya salad, fried spring rolls.

"How was your day?" I asked.

"Well, long. But not bad. Actually, I was thinking, if you're free, let's go out tonight." She clasped my hands. "My friend Lionel is DJing at this place in town." Her eyes shone with wild delight. She bumped her hip against mine.

"I don't know," I said. Dancing at some bar was the last thing I wanted to do. "I've had kind of a weird day. I was thinking of resting tonight."

"Why weird?" Yesenia asked, as she dropped a bite of papaya salad into her mouth with chopsticks.

"I went to a cafe earlier, and I met this girl in the washroom. She was having menses, and she bled through her shorts," I said.

I recounted the story for Yesenia.

"She couldn't speak," I finished.

"As in, she was mute?" Yesenia asked. It'd never occurred to me to describe her that way, but I supposed it was effectively true.

"That was nice of you to help her," Yesenia added. She placed a plate of fragrant Thai food before me.

We moved to the dining table. The light fixture above it appeared as a dandelion, with crystals set along filaments dispersing from the centre.

"I felt strangely connected to her," I said. I looked down at my food as I added, "When I was growing up, I didn't really speak to people. Sometimes I wasn't able to." I'd never shared my communication struggles with Yesenia before.

She looked at me inquisitively.

"I didn't talk in school until Primary 3 or 4. And I remember being anxious all the time," I shared.

Yesenia said, "Oh, wow. I've never heard of that happening. It must have been challenging for you."

I nodded. "It was difficult, but I had a teacher who took me under her wing. She was called Ms Chao. She gave me little tasks to do over time. Like passing out materials to my classmates, ordering food in the school canteen, or encouraging me to check out books from the library. She even helped me use the phone. I was terrified of making phone calls. We would write a script together so I'd know what to expect and she'd help me rehearse. Sometimes it took days for me to make a phone call."

"I had no idea," Yesenia said. "How did you overcome these things?" she asked.

"When I moved to secondary school, I'd improved a lot, thanks to Ms Chao. But in a way, even now, the issues linger. I'm still dealing with them to some extent," I answered.

Yesenia nodded her head in understanding. We chewed in thoughtful silence for a bit.

Then, I asked Yesenia, "Do you know what luo han guo is?"

Yesenia nodded. "The herbal drink?"

"Yes," I said. "It's usually for soothing a sore throat or cough. But my mum made me drink it every day. She believed it would help me talk." I quickly glanced at my housemate but couldn't maintain eye contact. It was another difficulty I had. I didn't want to see her seeing me. A gaze could hold too strong a judgement.

"Did the drink help?" Yesenia asked.

"No, of course not," I whispered. "And I can't stand the thought of it now. The taste repulses me."

I swallowed a bite of spicy green curry, as though to expel the memory. "Anyway, I've been sorting through some of these things today. That's why I'm not really in the mood to go out," I explained.

Yesenia said, "You mentioned that you're still dealing with some of the same issues. Care to say more?"

I considered how to articulate what I'd been experiencing, but I was blank. My mind felt suffused with a blinding light.

"I'll let you know later," I replied. "I don't quite know at the moment."

Yesenia nodded, stood up, and placed her hand compassionately on my shoulder as she walked past.

She hummed as we tidied the kitchen. I listened to her upbeat melody and washed the dishes. The tune sounded like something my mum might have sung to me when I was a child. She'd often conveyed her love through lullaby.

I caught onto Yesenia's song and hummed with her. She smiled at me and said, "It's this Filipino folk song adults always sang to us kids. I don't know why it came to mind. The lyrics are bizarre. There's this sassy woman who asks a store owner to let her buy snacks on credit. She tells him that ants will devour him if he doesn't. And then it gets weirder. A child is exchanged for a doll, and a baby is traded for prawn paste. It's incredibly sad actually. I don't know why we sing it to children. But it's beloved."

"What is the song called?"

"'Sitsiritsit Alibangbang.' It means something like, 'Hello, butterfly.'"

Yesenia finished wiping the table. She moved toward her room, then turned and said, "Hazel, I just want to say…" She paused for a moment. "I'm sorry if there were things in childhood that were painful for you. I'm sure your mum meant well. Sometimes our parents are just as lost as we are."

I nodded. "Thanks," I said.

Yesenia leaned on her door frame. "I'm going to get ready. Will you please come with me? I won't stay long. I just want to stop by for a little while to support my friend."

I sighed dramatically and said, "I'm too old for this." Yesenia and I were the same age, but she was somehow much more youthful in her demeanour.

"What kind of music does your friend play?" I asked.

"I think techno," she said." I'd never listened to techno in my life. It sounded miserable. But I knew I'd wallow in introspection if I didn't go.

"Forty-five minutes max," I said. "Then I'm coming home."

"Excellent," Yesenia said as shuffled to her room.

We took a bus into town. The club was not too far. I wore a black tee, jeans, and sneakers. I'd swiped on some mascara at Yesenia's insistence. She had attacked her eyelids with glitter. She wore striped, flared pants and a mesh top.

"You look like one of the women from that painting in our living room," I told her.

"Yes! Gean Brix Garcia. That's exactly what I was channelling," she enthused.

We zipped past the city. The buildings appeared stately, aglow with light from within. But the pretty scene was too immaculate. It only heightened my sense of isolation.

I recognised that a seed of dejection had been planted in me and had started to grow. Even before the encounter with Elena, I'd been unsettled by the intermittent, yet increasing, occurrences of my fading voice. I felt like I was being asked to wrestle again with something in me that wouldn't shake free. Something I thought I'd already purged.

I recalled, with a sinking feeling, my last date many months ago. The attractive lawyer who'd sat across from me in the warmly lit dining room asked what some of my goals were, my ambitions. I'd nervously sipped my white wine, trying to compose a response. But my throat seemed to constrict. No words could come out. And I couldn't meet his eyes. I could only stare at the stubble on his chin. After too long a silence, I'd simply jumped up from my seat and hastened away, baffled and demoralised.

"Hazel, we're here," Yesenia said.

We alighted in front of a row of shophouses.

Around the corner, there was a building with no signage, no indication that there was anything inside. But Yesenia grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door.

It was cool and cavelike. Loud music thumped methodically, like a storm surge against a helpless shore. I felt it more than I heard it. The beats seemed to be caught in a never-ending loop. No one paid us any attention as we moved deeper into the room. I felt something in my hand, and saw that Yesenia had given me earplugs. I nudged them in.

Each room seemed darker than the previous. And each was full, but people somehow managed to respect each other's space. I passed a man with a wide smile. In the darkness, his teeth seemed to glow. He had drawn the outline of eyes on his eyelids, so that he was in a perpetually unblinking state.

We meandered further through the depths of what felt like an organism and reached the heart. There was the DJ. Yesenia shimmied over to the guy behind the booth, whom I assumed was Lionel, and started vibing to the music.

I situated myself against a wall, my viewpoint of choice, and moved my feet self-consciously. Scanning the room, I noticed that people didn't seem at all interested in what others were doing. Everyone was in their own world. A guy with a sleek bun pumped his arms. A girl wearing shades casually rocked from side to side. No one was talking, just nodding to the pounding beat. A number of people had their eyes closed.

I tried it too, shutting out all visuals. Slowly I began to ease into the music. The dimness and the earplugs, I realised, created a barrier between myself and the space. There was no room to worry. My shoulders relaxed. I swayed. Then, I too faded into my own world. Counterintuitively, in a room full of people in motion, there was the sensation of being swaddled in a cocoon – I felt safe. And because of that, I also felt free.

I don't know how long I was lost in the hypnotic cacophony, but eventually I felt tapping on my arm. It was Yesenia. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her thumb up, then down, intending the gesture as a question. I signalled a thumbs-up.  

She tapped her watch and showed me the time. We'd been dancing for nearly two hours. She pointed toward the doorway. Another question. I nodded my head. We wound our way through the crowd, back through the length of the organism until it spit us out from its throat.

The night was calm. Clouds drifted across the moon. I inhaled the fresh air.

"What a thrill," Yesenia said, breathing heavily. My ears were still acclimatising to the world, so her words sounded muffled. I felt suspended in a gentle fog. I looked at Yesenia with elation. She smiled back and draped her arm across my shoulder.

At home, physically worn but awake nonetheless, I tossed from side to side in bed. The clock read 1.23am. A nice, sequential number to fall asleep to, I thought. But my eyes would not close. I needed to do something.

I got up and went to the kitchen for some water.

The experience at the rave had stirred something in me. I'd sensed a new alignment in myself, one where my mind rested and my body took control. It was as though an axis within me had inverted.

I returned to my room and opened my desk. Inside there was an untouched A3 drawing pad. The cover was spotted from the humidity. The pages had yellowed in my neglect. I tore a sheet of paper from the pad and began cutting it with scissors. I moved quickly, charged with mysterious adrenaline. I simply let my hands work.

Dust particles sprayed into the air as I cut through the fibres of the old paper. Crooked shapes fell at my feet like snowflakes.

I manipulated the paper, easing and bending it, reacquainting myself with its touch. My fingertips became raw. It wasn't until I turned off the ceiling light and sat the folded form atop my desk lamp that I understood what I'd made.

An exquisite landscape sprung up around the bedroom. Geometries I'd never seen before were suddenly real. Mesmerised, I traced my fingers over the shapes and shadows along the wall.

Eventually I crawled into bed but left the improvised night light on. The time was 2.19am. My eyelids were heavy at last, my mind at peace.

From then on, my bedroom became a lab of sorts. I went to work in the day and sat hunched over computer screens and renderings, lighting plans, schematics. I'd always believed lighting was a secret language, a gift I'd been given. But gradually, I came to realise that I'd not yet learnt the true language. The plans and schematics were jumbled letters. I'd been playing with the alphabet, when a world of words and sentences awaited me.

Every evening I went home, ate a quick dinner, and retreated to my bedroom. Then, the real work began. I made lighting fixtures of various sizes, from odd materials. Paper, plastic, metal, fabric, string, glass, wire. All were useful and potentially transformative. I enlisted Yesenia's help in scavenging material of any kind. Little scrap piles accumulated in the recesses of the room.

I deleted the dating apps from my phone and bid them good riddance. The need to find a partner diminished. I was content and enamoured of other things.

On Saturdays, I rested. Visiting the cafe where I'd met Elena became a sort of ritual. I thought of her often and wished her well. There was always a kernel of hope that I'd bump into her again, but I never did. Still, she was present in my designs.

One night, I was curling wire with pliers, when I remembered the strawberry keychain that had hung from Elena's bag. It was a strange thing to recall, appearing in my mind arbitrarily. But once there, I could not expunge the image.

I saw the wire in my hand take the form of the heart-shaped fruit. I stood and sifted through my supply of fabrics. Setting apart pieces of tulle in beige, pink, coral, and red, I layered them over the wire frame. The effect was lovely, but I knew it would be lovelier still if the strawberry encircled a small light. I needed more wire, more tulle. I needed lights.

The demands of the project were tremendous. I started working from home nearly every day, taking client calls online. Then, I simply stopped taking calls altogether. I put away my phone. For the first time in my life, there was no pressure to speak or behave in a certain manner.

I carefully arranged the strawberries in clusters, as plants, letting them dangle freely. The plants were linked together by thicker, sturdier wire. I painstakingly balanced the plants, constructing an ever-expanding sculpture of luscious strawberries.

I had a vision of not just a chandelier, but a sweeping canopy of brightly lit plants that cascaded from my ceiling. I was still working out the structural elements. The solution would come in time, I assured myself. In the meantime, the strawberries were bountiful and ripening each day. I looked around at the work I'd done, at my patch of healthy plants, and was pleased.

At some point, I confessed to myself that I'd lost track of time. The numbers on the clock were 8.47, but they meant little to me. I couldn't remember when I'd last eaten or bathed. My head felt light as a cloud. I smiled and tried to hum, but the desiccated cartilage in my throat tightened. I choked violently on my own body.

I ran to the bathroom and gulped water from the sink.

There was a swift knock on my door, and then it was opened. Yesenia stood in the doorway. She gasped as she gazed at the strawberry patch, then at me.

Isn't it beautiful? I wanted to ask. My lips moved to say the words, but no sound emerged.

_____