Author: kelly

I use too many em dashes—like, way too many.

a tribute to a place that will no longer be

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(captured and written in May 2024)

This is the ninth time in my life that I have moved. When you’re moving, especially on a tight deadline and alone, your brain goes on autopilot, throwing belongings into boxes or trash bags at a merciless pace. Whatever space and time cannot afford ends their journey with you unceremoniously, like saying goodbye to tour guides in a foreign city. Rooms get colder and larger and you start to notice the colour of your walls. The day you first moved in will feel the most familiar it has ever felt and will ever feel.

This is the ninth time I have moved, but it doesn’t get any easier. Besides this unassuming flat behind that double-locked cobalt blue door, there’s no other place that I’ve called home for longer, and I fear that I will only continue to feel this way for as long as I’m not done forging my own path out here. I remember the last time I was in school in Singapore, I had promised myself that I would make every day after that life count for something, but what I didn’t also register was that counting begets so many goodbyes.

Thank you for the past 2 years Abingdon, for giving me and my best friends a space to laugh, cry, fall in love, eat, learn, host, and rest, and for seeing me off on the final day of my educational journey. I can’t remember the last time I showed someone around this place but I know I was proud. I hope the next three will love you just as much.

by an open suitcase

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Desoleil hums in the background. i am twenty again.
twenty years not wise enough to unbuckle my seatbelt
when you leaned forward to kiss me in your car.
i am fork-tender, clumsy, a child tumbling down a grassy hill,
never noticing that we’d only ever lay
by an open suitcase—usually mine.

Sweet plays in between our kisses hello and goodbye.
i am twenty-one, and so are you.
our soles are blackened by
the irish soil of st stephen’s green—i am
a channel away from my house, and oceans away from home,
hiding in the folds of an atlas from everyone i know.
thanklessly,
you get down on one knee to tie my laces as
i surrender my search for a villian in our story.
it’s just you and i, and the world feels like
the bud of a flower, then a full exhale.

Surf is the next song on your car’s radio. we are twenty-two.
we hug, two charred wicks melting into a single flame,
anchored in stillness on the same side of a glider swing.
we’ll never meet again. when the night ends,
you call out from behind for one last kiss
and i indulge you like a mother does a child,
fishing my last cookie from the jar.
from behind my front gate, your face is
a portrait undone by inches of iron and air,

but all i remember is the way, that winter night we met,
neon lights spilled across your unweathered cheekbones—
a shimmering, otherworldly mess—
and how, past the smoke-laden air and tide of bodies,
you looked at me with a question you couldn’t answer,
as if you’d found something more than magic.

twenty-two is all we have, and all we will know,
so i linger at the gate. i do not leave.
not until the tyres of your car pull you from my street,
when the last crack of the gravel
swallows the song of you leaving more slowly than you came.
more slowly than ever before, and ever again.

bristol, uk

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as a well-deserved breather after weeks of interning, varian and i took a short trip to bristol.

we started off the day by having lunch at st. nicholas market, where i got a mediterranean salad bowl from the olive works filled with halloumi, hummus, gremolata potatoes, couscous, olives, dolmades and more. this is probably my favourite cuisine, so having such a variety of mediterranean food to munch on was a real treat! varian got a filling bbq plate from low and slow, with pulled pork and mac & cheese. afterwards, we toured the eclectic range of stalls in the marketplace where i got some sea salt with mountain herbs from be natural kitchen.

having heard lots about the cafe scene in bristol, we headed to society cafe for our first caffeine break, and then full court press for our second. i must say that the 1029 lake kivu rwanda beans from full court press was some of the best coffee beans i’ve tried — with milk, the espresso shot supposedly has notes of golden raisin and creme caramel, on top of its original fruity notes such as orange, raisin, biscuit and red wine.

in order to avoid potentially overdosing on caffeine by having a third cup of coffee in a row, we went on a hunt for banksy’s art, scattered about the city. the one that was most recognisable to me was banksy’s well hung lover, in full view at the beginning of park street. we also checked out the christmas steps, a narrow walkway that was lined beautifully with vintage shop fronts and fairy lights.

heading down to the harbour, we attempted to visit the brunel’s ss great britain, but the journey there was oddly complicated (there were no bridges to help us cross the canal) so we just admired it from afar. we headed back to where we came from and walked around the bristol cathedral and bristol city council, where there was some sort of carnival taking place.

no trip to bristol would be complete without checking out the clifton suspension bridge. we climbed uphill to the clifton observatory to view the iconic bridge from afar, but it started raining so we took shelter at the royal oak and conveniently got some small plates as an early dinner. after it stopped raining, we found some gems of books in the last bookshop and got them for as cheap as £4 each.

before we caught our coach back to london, we visited the famous mrs. potts chocolate house and shared a very delicious and creamy cup of hot chocolate!!!

+8

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if i walk down london’s streets to 
the ticking of the kitchen clocks—
rows of billowing steam from
stews and curries that do not remind me
of home—
i could almost traverse these eight hours, a 
second and a step at a time, 
outpacing the sun that stretches my shadow, 
undulating against the cobbled mews. 

i adore the way you speak my name—the hook 
of your tongue reels me back from everything ugly, 
crushing my mental map of loss. 
i am named for the millionth time, 
but beckoned for the first.
so i keep walking, addicted, faster than the 
ancient tempo of seconds, 

fast enough to escape the trawler of reason,

begging time to let me catch you at the end of my 
afternoon shadow. 

yet the line in greenwich is stubbornly still, 
itself a blade welded by visits of the sun, 
carving up the temporalities that 
melt away within these same four walls.
a playground of conversation—childlike fun until 
you yawn and say good night and 
blow me a kiss i wish the wifi would let lag. 

i don’t lose, my dear, i can’t, not to time nor space, 

so that’s why i rush home, wrestling the hands of the clock,
where i eat warm rice and xo sauce until 
i’m no longer starved of the illumination of my screen. 
until i forget that i am just like that paper-thin iris 
i plucked and hairsprayed from your bouquet,

in a dark room, 
leaning into that fluttering glow,
praying it’s not bloomberg news 
and that the connection is just bad today.