Walking on a cliffScared you might fallYou close your eyesBut don’tNot before you seeWhat lies beneath youAnd realizeIt’s not a cliff butA staircase at your home An uneasy conversationFrightened you are trappedYou take offBut don’tNot before you seeWhat’s happening around youAnd realizeWhat you were hearingWas a memory of an old conversation Keep your eyes openUntil […]
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When I was about fifteen, one day, my maternal grandmother was visiting my home and we were chatting when she mentioned how as she grew older, she found certain physical activities difficult. “For example, I find jumping hard these days,” she said. “When I follow the exercise program on the radio, when it’s time to
In late summer when I was eight, one day, my father and I made a daytrip to a mountain not too far from our town. Prior to our departure, there was a minor quarrel between my parents. The place my father had picked was a trail along a river in a cave, and my mother
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In this memory, I’m five. My two-year-old brother learns how to read, and now, he has a few favourite picture books he likes to read out loud. Whenever he is not playing with his toy buses, he goes to the backroom of our apartment and pulls out a book from the shelf. “Nontan, let me
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DisconnectThat’s what it isThere is before and afterBut nothing in between No, that’s not trueThere is something thereBut you can’t see itNo matter how close you look Where something once existedThere is now absenceWhere nothing used to existThere is now new presence And you’re left wonderingWhat really happenedHow it happenedAnd what is yet to happen
I’m three in this memory. In August, my new-born brother comes out of ICU after his heart surgery, and because my parents need to focus on his care, I’m sent to my maternal grandmother to spend three weeks with her family. At her house, everybody wants to know about my brother’s condition. They ask my
When I was little, there was a cheap diner that my family would occasionally go to for dinner. Though it couldn’t have been far away from our home, the drive in darkness made it feel very far away. As we sat down at a table by a window, I spotted towers in the distant hill
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In this memory, I’m about nine years old. Every Thursday is the garbage collection day for my neighbourhood. My mother collects all the garbage in the house and if I’m downstairs, I take the bags to the nearest collection spot. Every few blocks share a designated collection spot, and you’re not supposed to dispose your
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The data is missingCannot run the programFrustratingWant the result anyhowWaitDon’t imputeCollect more dataDon’t make up picturesBut listen carefully instead
The year when I entered primary school, the Pokémon anime series came on the national television network. Everybody around me, both boys and girls, became crazy about the series. Except me. At my home, I was only allowed to watch one anime per week – a rule my mother had made to prevent me from
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