In Continuum.

Laundry and Cucumber



Driving away from the wreck of the day
And the light's always red in the rear-view
Desperately close to a coffin of hope
I'd cheat destiny just to be near you

I have a strange feeling that I might be a reincarnation of a Filipino maid who killed herself in the past life. There is the certain level of sympathy whenever I am in a lift, and next to me the poor maid stands with her arms full of grocery bags, weighing her down as if she doesn't already have enough weights on her shoulders. And there is the dirty glares at their employer standing in the corner, blabbering away on his or her cellphone and then hurrying the maid out of the doors. Most of the time, these maids are merely in their early twenties, and to have their youth flushed down the toilet because some rich Chinese Singaporean is too lazy to do housework themselves is enough, you don't have to treat them like dirt and trash.

I offer my help with the groceries sometimes, but when they say that it is "Okay" - though it usually means "My employer will murder me" - it's not like I can yank the bags out of her arms, right? Besides all that, there is the urge to do housework when I am feeling emotional. Isn't that strange for a man? I would imagine an average male to hang around with a bunch of his friends and get drunk, get high, get laid while dealing with a heartbreak or stress. I don't seem to have the urge to see anybody I know, but to remain anonymous as I am and then surround myself with as much physical work as possible to keep my mind off things.

My mother must have sensed that part of me, and deployed me to different areas of the house to clear up some household chores quotas that I owe her. What can I say? Mothers always know.

If this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up
If this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up, giving up
On love...
On love...

I shaved my fingers while trying to get rid of the skin on the cucumber. The concentration must have slipped somewhere between the monotonous motions of my arm. The down-strokes were perhaps too mundane to keep my mind off the thoughts that I had before my mother's voice from the kitchen. And now the side of my index finger bled, and I watched as the blood flowed down the side towards the tip and finally onto the shape blade of the peeler. The water ran continuously, washing away the green skin of the cucumber into the drain hole, spinning and spinning. I kept watching it, until the pain transformed into a sort of itch, then numbness. I don't know how long I stared at the wound in a daze until my mother came to pull my hand away from the sink.

The cucumber tumbled into the sink with a dull bang, and the peeler crashed in with the vegetable, causing a brilliant display of water and blood to splash upwards. By then, my palm was already covered in blood, part of them still dripping onto the plain white carpet below. My mother kept her pressure on the finger while running the wound under the running water. "It's all right mom, it's not as serious as it looks". But the skin between her eyes folded, and from within either of them I saw signs of worry and questions. "What were you thinking?" she asked. "What were you thinking?"

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And I'm thinking 'bout calling on Jesus
'Cause love doesn't hurt so I know I'm not falling in love
I'm just falling to pieces

What was I thinking? I asked quietly to myself, as the wrapping bandage brought comfort to my wounded flesh. Recollecting, I was thinking about the entry that I typed previously and how honest it felt. I was thinking about you before your computer, reading my words and possibly tearing to some of the words - or in contrast, feeling nothing at all. The downward strokes of the cucumber failed to keep my thoughts off anything, and I started to fear this one thing: If everyday activities such as shaving a cucumber can evoke such beautiful yet dreadful memories of you, then how am I supposed to run away from this haunting? Don't tell me that time will heal all wounds, and don't tell me that I will find a new girl. Because once broken, considered sold. I do not have possession of my heart, anymore.

So I returned to the sink, blood still visible on the edges of the stainless steel sink. The cucumber laid there like a broken arm, half of it in deep green while the other in a lighter shade. My mother convinced me to stop and do something else, something that will keep my bandage dry for the time being. But I continued shaving, caring little about the throbbing pain in my index finger. Because I couldn't bear to see something undone, unfinished. Unlike our love, I wanted to finish something and tell myself that I have completed something, accomplished something. Even if it is a piece of cucumber, at least I gained more satisfaction than the broken love you returned.

If this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up
If this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up, giving up
On love...
On love...

Those tiles always feel sticky underneath my feet. It must be the oil from the kitchen, staining the floor behind the house. The clothes hung there in the air like ghosts, dangling from twisted wires and hooks. Hanging from a chain that stretched between the top of the storeroom door and the window of the laundry area of the house. Beyond the window, the setting sun greeted me with the last of it's warmth, promising me that the next day will come swiftly and soon enough, I will feel better again. But then I thought to myself, as I took down those ghostly corpses that hung, that tomorrow will be yet another uneventful, purposeless day. Tomorrow will be yet another day without you, and tonight will be yet another night, when I have to get over you all over again.

Keeping the laundry required more work than shaving a cucumber. But still, it failed to keep my mind off anything. The pain in my index finger burned, and into the basket I tossed the dry clothes. Piling on top of one another, like dead bodies washed up on a beach. I pictured myself amongst the corpses, with sand covering my face and a crab crawling out of my mouth. It disturbed me, to know that imagining myself in a scene like that wasn't hard at all. Perhaps it was because, the feeling of death was upon me, that I haven't got a good reason to live any longer. And then the memories came again, so many days and weeks ago on Christmas Eve...

...when I asked you to keep the clothes with me. You were in that over-sized pink shirt of yours, that almost made your black short invisible. "I will keep these, you take care of the rest. I will go over and help", I remember saying, pointing to the hanging under-garments from the pegs. You smiled at me, and told me that it is all right after I kept apologizing. You told me that you do such things at home all the time, but still I felt that immense guilt. But you are my girlfriend, I thought to myself. You shouldn't be helping me with my family's laundry! My girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend. It pained me, to even type that.

And maybe I'm not up for being a victim of love
When all my resistance will never be distance enough

I stared into the distance for the longest time, seeing your ghost reaching up to the hooks and taking down the clothes. The hollow pain is back again, every time I reach up to unhook one of those corpses. And I see the personification of our love up there, hanging like a limp fish and blowing in the wind. The setting sun casted an orange glow to the white t-shirt, and it almost made it seem like there is still life in there, still hope.

But I was being foolish, I know. And I wonder if anybody spotted me staring at the t-shirt for so long. No, nobody did. Dad was in the kitchen helping out with the food on the chopping board while my mother was at the stove. Nobody saw me freezing on the spot momentarily, or the way the sunlight must have reflected that drop of tear in my eyes. I wiped it away with the back of my arm and ran down the corridor with the basket of clothes in my hands. I dared not look at anything but the floor, because everything reminds me of you now. Just, everything. This thoroughness is killing me, suffocating me slow as I forced your face out of my blackened vision upon the bed.

I mumbled your name, prayed to somebody out there to make you go away. But burying my face between the pillow and the blanket didn't help at all. Your face became a recurring image in my head, like the strange faces of passengers on board a train. Coming and coming and coming and coming. And when the faces are moving that fast, all faces seem to look the same. But this train has no end, and all I see on the train is you passing by and by.

So I took a great leap at you in my head, into the images that flashed before my eyes. Into the metallic body of the train of memories, I felt the pain spreading from the finger tip and chest, as my body broke into a million pieces in my mind. Blood splattered, like the way it did as it dripped from the tip of the peeler. Time slowed down to a crawl, and I watched as the drop of blood fell. Watched, as my hope for any more love in my life went draining away with the life in my veins. There it goes, there it goes. I shall not love anybody as much as I did for you, anymore.

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And it's finally quiet in my head
Driving alone,
Finally on my way home to the comfort of my bed

And if this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up
If this is giving up,
Then I'm giving up, giving up
On love...
On love...