tammy ho lai-ming : “tales of departure”
I.
My sister's friend knows a friend who knows someone whose job was to locate missing people. For a few years, she was confided to many inside stories of moderately rich families and she retrieved teenagers and adults alike from dire or humiliating situations. She enjoyed an odd sense of satisfaction mingled with hatred whenever someone thanked her for unearthing the precise location of a lost soul in the sunset of everlasting disappointment. One day, she was gone. Nobody knew where she went. Perhaps she wanted to be found by someone like herself; and the two of them could be best friends, sharing strategies and evil secrets. But no one seems to care about her enough to take the initiative to consult a detective. And therefore she is free. Somewhere between this world and the next.
II.
If a man claimed that she did not know her life was approaching its end, he was lying. She knew, oh of course she knew how her inside was rotting at a great speed. She felt by day she's wearing her inside inside-out and by night she was really coughing her inside out. That night, wrapped in strings of plastic water-proof batteried light bulbs, she jumped into the sea. From afar, her body was transformed into moving fireworks igniting the curiosity of billion sea salts.
III.
A very dear friend of mine (he called himself Joshua Burdette, which is really a made-up name) liked quoting lyrics. Once, when I was telling him about my family background, which was (and is still) not privileged, his bearded face twisted a little (a sign that he remembered some relevant lyrics), and then he's reciting a song by Stevie Wonder, "Living Just Enough for the City". Joshua spoke words that I have never spoken; but afterwards I found that he spoke my heart; and he's much more prolific. A lazy afternoon, we sat on a bench next to a rusted iron fence without enjambment. We were chatting like birds of two different species, complaining about other animals' foodlore. Suddenly he leaned forward (and downward as well, for he's a great deal taller than me) and kissed me on the forehead. In his unique mumbled fashion, he told me he will leave the town and fish for a lifetime. I have never seen him since; but I hope he fishes well, and fishes much.
Tammy Ho Lai-ming, aka Sighming, is a Hong Kong-born & -based writer. She is the editor of HKU Writing: An Anthology (March, 2006) & a co-editor of Word Salad Poetry Magazine. More at www.sighming.com.
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