Celestial Bodies

Here’s to my first tattoo finally etched at the age of twenty,

Count them rays, surrounding a muse in a form of duality

Of fulfillment in distant opposites within your sights’ vacancy

Of an unrequited round of tag made to kiss & defy an impossibility

The star in hopes to inspire, surrounding in 6 as compassion & empathy

For it can’t be plucked, without your faith in such unwanted sensitivity

The moon, the cancer, a calm ruler in the throne of my insecurity

Loving despite illusions made by the subconscious of my anxiety

The sun, XIX, the date I was born in, a card of warmth & positivity

Cradling a fruitful abundance within the creativity in my melancholy

"What will happen if the sun instead tried to kiss the moon.

Dawn creeps along with desire as they brush a moment too soon.

As she was the biggest star one could've imagined to ever swoon.

If they were to kiss, I doubt that we'd still be humming our usual tune”

Based on a self-proclaimed fluency in tarot cards & constellations full of prophecies

On a short prose dear for I’ve read them in front of my two idols in spoken poetry

And on endless abstract metaphors shared in conversations between you & me

Oh what an age, a state to be in, a mess embraced continuously in the name of vulnerability.

--

“...And I can’t say it to you like the way you show love to me,

Maybe it’s too dark to see in my closet as the sun jumped her leap of faith

To find out the expectation is a naught full of dreams.

The sun blackened out, showing the true sorrow underneath -

That the moon will always be the moon and the chase will keep on living until the end of time.” 

too wrote he, another meaning to this that was once perhaps a form of sorry.

Rahayu

The home I go to is now a 70 year old something woman that does not recognize the phrase “I’m full” from all the food she’d offer. She lays with the starfish in far seas to calm herself after a long day, with hair so long it is time’s own waterfall dropping from the bed that she’d cover. In every strand a prayer engraved, as she breathes in to the sanskrit phrases she holds close. She whispers them to me when in need, even though other kids have remembered their mantras since they were five. But it didn’t matter to her, as long as I’m aware of the kindness that would matter in life.

Even though our language oozes in it, Bhineka Tunggal Ika, that’s the only sanskrit we’ve consciously been throwing around lately. If it was a person it would note that “the only one that can shout my full name is my mother and if there is still a mental ID plate in your glance with blanks to fill - you might as well not bother.” Diversity now seems to only last in selfies and pamphlet pictures, before we go back to our never ending war of majority vs. minority and all that follows that rhymes with sweet ice tea.

Kuat kuat kuat, she tells me to be. Hold tight to your femininity and ethnicity, there’s no room for pity! I had to go to school behind my dad by running away with my trustee bike. Whenever I exchanged used cardboards for some rujak - away and up the mango trees I’d hike. Now, that is an independence necessary that comes from being the eldest girl in the family. She was of eleven though, I am of two - I shouldn’t complain. Kids these days, she goes one, do they even know how to sweep up & wash off a stain? All this she reenacts with
arms, hands, fingers that flutters with her whim and by 4 she takes a break to watch her hindi soap opera on TV while I sip my coffee with spoonfuls of sugar too many.

The home I go to is optimistic, I can spot a smile or two in every turn here. Too happy & ignorant, I too would start to fear. How are we independent again? The internet was down the other day and I couldn’t even contact anyone or finish my poem. What I’m trying to say is that - these anecdotes about my grandma, Rahayu, is my home. Two sides of the same coin, she is what I’ve always imagined Indonesia if it was a character, or if they were friends, Leo & Sagittarius - they’d be compatible as they teach those around them that things are not only solvable but laughable.

Such beauty thought she was ugly and dying by 72, even though she’s gracefully aging like how this home is too. She loves her greens both in the garden she’d take long walks in and in her meals, and I bet this home does too. Would love it if someone pays attention to all of her stories, to all of her worries, like how I bet this home would too. I’d complain about horrible local TV content, she’d complain about the youth that’s now too destructively dependent - and for now we can only paint them red and white in this independence day, but know that our freedom have always made its bed in sharp weapons that can now be achieved through what we strive to learn and say.

Dirgahayu Republik Indonesia ke-72!