Chian ying xuan

Two Flashes

some memories (for Alex)

When I cried into your arms the other day, I worried about

1.       swallowing too much snot and getting sick from that.

2.       soiling your cotton polo shirt, which I could tell was a high thread-count one and that you had ironed it.

I remember walking into your room on Townhead Street thinking, He must iron his bedsheets. Your bedrooms—all three of them that I’ve been to so far—have always been pristine. I’ve always thought that you, you middle-class bachelor from Colchester, were quite posh, which is why I find your anti-bourgeois outlook on life, despite your cushy upbringing, adorable and, in fact, admirable. I remember the way you crinkle your nose in what I suppose is secondhand bashfulness when talking about how your parents shop at a bougie supermarket, or the way you gag at the mention of a certain politician.

(All that being said, I remember that your “dope ass dhal” recipe, which you painstakingly hand-wrote in that immaculate cursive of yours, was adapted from a fancy magazine, and I honestly found it delicious.) (I also remember you misspelled “dhal” as “dahl” as in “Roald Dahl.”) (And I remember the awful “pun tennis” we played on WhatsApp in which I came up with “let’s dhal 111.” That’s peak comedy, don’t you reckon?)

Your thirst for personal growth is beautiful to watch. So beautiful, I often wonder whatever I did to deserve you in my life, however long that might be for.

As we sauntered around Bolehills, you did a little jive. From the top of the hill, I watched you go, do a little spin like a ballerina in a music box. There was a gentle breeze. The foliage trembled around you in their fragile nakedness, a theatrical backdrop. I had to film you on my phone.

The few months after that lovely walk we shared were rough. Whenever I felt down, I would rewatch that three-second clip of gangly you, chocolate hair, plaid cardigan and all, shimmy through the mud without a care in the world… I suppose in the same way you reread that cringey post I wrote on Reddit about how we met in which I shamelessly called you a “spicy nerd.’” It’s your little gift to me, alongside another video I have of you whizzing around Skate Central to Tina Turner’s “What's Love Got to Do with It,” the spotlights around us fading from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to indigo to violet and back to red.

i love you i love you i love you

There are times when I entirely give up trying to intellectualise how I feel about you and rely on the one phrase I’ve known from the incessant, ubiquitous fusillades from movies and songs and books and real conversations with real people, from advertisements on television and on the bus and on the train and at the start of every YouTube video (I’ve never subscribed to Premium) and the end of every soundtrack on Spotify (I’ve never subscribed to Premium), from postcards and posters and mugs and magnets, from my mouth to your ears like a wet, slobbering kiss in your musty dusty bedroom at 11:37 p.m. as you’re moaning not in pleasure but in resentment that tomorrow is another day—now it’s 11:38 p.m—and you will once again face another day of meetings and phone calls and (some) stupid people at (some) stupid conferences but I tell you it’s also another day of the blistering summer sun tickling the back of your neck and another day of me leaping into your spindly legs like a clumsy puppy and another day of listening to the brilliant sizzling of your pan at midday, of long hugs in the shower, of empty yoghurt pots and sallow tea bags, of bad jokes and terrible puns… another day of me loving you.