The Cupboard

Opening these old plywood doors
is like stepping --
into a time machine -- and stepping
into a past when you were still around;
everyday, shuttling from home to work, and home again,
on your beloved green Vespa;
and Saturday nights, in front of the TV,
in one of your old sarongs, watching
British Bulldog and Undertaker beat the crap
out of each other.

Now, congealed dust coat the surface of your things
(which have hardly been touched eversince you left)
and the saturated reek of mothballs and stale minyak attar
stubbornly fill this confined space,
making my nose twitch and my eyes
water.

Mom says, I should take
some of your clothes and use them,
but how could I --
Wear shirts, tinged with yellow from long un-use, and pants,
at least two sizes too small?
These dated habiliments -- and many others -- I can only
fold away
and put away into boxes,
for storage in a corner of the room, where they can
be conveniently Forgotten.

So heavy, these hands, as I run them over
your old socks -- their elastic long gone -- and your
precious few baju kurungs;
But heavier still is the heart.
Each garment that I touch
invokes a slice of memory -- Memory after memory,
re-lived, and then
packed and stacked on top of each other.
No wonder, that it took some years before
someone went around to do this. . .

Make way! Make way for those still living!
Someone else's things will be placed here tomorrow --
here, behind these old plywood doors --
because Life goes on, and all that jazz.

-- circa Oct. 2006