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When I was a child in Java, the river from the mountains haemorrhaged through our village. God'swrath, that's what they called it, the purge of the Communist bane. A foul red porridge of limbs and headless bodies bobbing past in the water.
The stench unbearable and the water unusable. Corpses clogged the irrigation and poisoned the paddy fields. The resilient people of my village bent their necks and continued dredging the irrigation canels, clearing the riverbanks of decaying remains. Day in, day out, as if waiting for the season to pass.
"Nrimo," they said. Accept what God gives you.
Bend like the straw on the riverbank.
A balmy, humid Balinese night many years later, and I wonder if this is what I must contend with - the cruelty of your knock on my gate and the vain hope it alights.
You. Sheepish where you stand biting your lip, fidgeting with the strap of your cheap cotton dress. That dress, sanguine red like my futile yearning for you. This fruitless cycle of events, over and over again.
I should say no, but I'm skinless like a peeled clam around you. And nothing can stop the bright yellow happiness from welling forward. A shimmering tidal wave of joy, thrashing into my glum courtyard at the sight of you there. Guilt trailing not far behind like a rancid smell. You're not mine to have. You're borrowed, stolen, embezzled.
You cannotbend water. Water bends you. That's what my mother used to say, but I'll be damned if I know what it means. Man can build dams, canals and reservoirs. You can lead water from the mountains, divert streams and make artificial lakes. Surely you can bend water. Surely I can make you mine.
I try to bend you.
Every time I swear it's the last. Then you appear on my doorstep, like a homeless mutt kicked to the curb and those two words burn my throat like acid, drip like hot oil from my tongue.
Leave him.
Two words repeated a thousand times, in a hundred different ways.
I have roared them at the top of my lungs, yelled them and choked on them. I've etched them inside of my palms with my fists clenched harder than macadamia nuts. I've painted them along your knobbly spine with a whisper of fingertips.
Leave him, leave him.
I have ground them between my teeth like gravel, dabbed them in peroxide on your wounds. I have pleaded them satin soft into your hair and licked them across your belly like a question mark. I have wept them in the sleeve of my shirt, hiding my face in shame. Because only a sucker loves an aberration like you.
"Come on in for devil's sake." I clasp hold around your arm, drawing you inside. How has he hurt you this time? My grip slipping down your fingers, entangling yours between mine.
