Written at the beginning of this year for rasasastra submission — a collective art project founded by my good poetry sister, Carissa. The last couple of months of 2019 was such a significantly healing phase in my life. With what has been happening in 2020, it is so easy to drown in the frustration that everything felt like it went straight back to square one. Lately my mind spins around the question of what healing actually looks like? What is inner peace? What are the checkpoints? I haven’t found the answers but this little film is a reminder that there’s a space of joy that I once was in and I can always go back to.
What I mean is, at first, it looked like false advertising. Thought it would cost too much for something I didn’t need; an impulsive desire; a first-world country dream I couldn’t afford to imagine.
This is how I remember the move-in day;
I sat on the warm hardwood floor. Cartons of curated memories all over the place.
There’s a box smelled like lingering burnt jepun and cendana and crackling kretek, mixed with mountain air. On the table was thali with sunny garlic naan we passed around. Thank you were names melted into the layer of skin I am carrying everywhere; constantly giving without permission. Sunsets easing fear into spools of thank you I scooped with open palms, stitched them into poems. Strangers held them like a newborn child. This is where my spine learned to stretch into a living room for compliments instead of curling into compromise.
There’s a box of thank you dancing to Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, 1 AM, we were warm beer on the floor swirling, swaying, swinging to the same tune of thank you I have mastered to sing by heart.
There’s a box with more boxes inside, pocket-sized gratitude. I pulled one with the most familiar thank you — is back home, is forgiving, is forgiven.
What I mean is, I spent the whole day unloading.
Put where they belong, everything.
Watching the walls and corners slowly turn into arms I dip myself to heal.
What I mean is my new apartment doesn’t have a balcony or any overhead beam strong enough to carry my body.. What I mean is the ceilings are not chasing me. This house comes with gravity and it is such an unfamiliar feeling to be wanted by the ground, and not three feet under this time.
What I mean is, it took my mother two days to give birth to me, and when she finally did I wouldn’t stop wailing for hours, and hours, and hours. “You,” my mother said, “were born a fighter”, I laughed because even she mistook my resistance for existence. How many casualties does it take for us to realize that even the best soldiers do not belong in the warzone? When I say thank you is my brand new apartment; today it is a retirement house.
What I mean is, here I no longer point at love and call it a rescue mission. I do not mistake blisters and scars with birthmarks now. Thank you led me to people who love like it’s the only thing they have ever learned and their heart is a city I will always return to. And every homecoming taught me thank you. And thank you taught me that in this house I do not have to shrink myself to feel safe. What I mean is sometimes I feel bigger than this city and still as empty as this city.
What I mean is in this house we speak the language of gratitude and my mouth recites thank you without an aftertaste of guilt. Happiness is a seasonal guest. But the doors are always unlocked. When I say thank you is the brand new apartment; today it is a waiting room of delayed arrival and time is just something we eat for dinner.
Some days it doesn’t feel like it. Some days it’s a museum for things I rescued from the burning houses that do not look like death. Some days the smoke follows me home, lurking in the dark, but Haven’t you heard that the greatest victories wouldn’t have been written in history without witnesses?
What I mean is, there is no house that is not haunted.
What I mean is thank you is my brand new apartment.
What I mean is it is haunted.
What I mean is, thank you, I am not the ghost anymore.