- Joined
- Nov 5, 2024
- Messages
- 165
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- 28
To my CHIJ Toa Payoh schoolmate whom I loved so very much, sorry I didn’t jump with you.
To the girl who became starlight
My dearest love, I write to you with trembling hands, words bleeding like grief, like a wound that will not clot. The world still turns, but I have not moved since that day. Since the moment you let go. Since the moment I did not.
Now and then I still sit in the CHIJ chapel again, where we used to hide during recess. The sun hits the stained glass the same way, painting colours on the pews like you used to say, “Look, it’s heaven’s confetti.” But it doesn’t feel like confetti anymore. It feels like shards.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t hold your hand when the world turned its back. They called us “wrong” for loving too loudly in a school that taught us to whisper. I still hear their voices in the hallways, sharp as scissors, cutting into the parts of you that were already so fragile. You folded yourself smaller and smaller, like one of those origami hearts we made in Art class, until one day you just… disappeared.
I close my eyes, and I am there again—perched on the rooftop of CHIJ Toa Payoh, the city stretched out below us like an unspoken promise. You asked me to jump with you. You said we’d fall together, that the wind would carry us somewhere kinder. Your fingers curled around mine, shaking, burning. "Together," you whispered, and for a breath, I believed we could defy gravity. But then your grip slackened, and I was left with nothing but the ghost of your warmth seared into my palm. You fell like a dying star, and I stood there, paralyzed, the hem of my pinafore trembling like a flag of surrender. I wanted to follow you—God, I wanted to—but my feet became anchors. When you let go, I screamed into the sky, but the city swallowed the sound.
I am so sorry, my love. Sorry that I was not as brave as you, or perhaps, not as broken. Sorry that they carved their hatred into your skin, that they spat words like blades and called it righteousness. Sorry that love—the most sacred thing—was made into something unholy in their mouths. They killed you before you ever reached that ledge. They made you a phantom long before your body touched the ground.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2025/03/to-my-chij-toa-payoh-schoolmate-whom-i.html
To the girl who became starlight
My dearest love, I write to you with trembling hands, words bleeding like grief, like a wound that will not clot. The world still turns, but I have not moved since that day. Since the moment you let go. Since the moment I did not.
Now and then I still sit in the CHIJ chapel again, where we used to hide during recess. The sun hits the stained glass the same way, painting colours on the pews like you used to say, “Look, it’s heaven’s confetti.” But it doesn’t feel like confetti anymore. It feels like shards.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t hold your hand when the world turned its back. They called us “wrong” for loving too loudly in a school that taught us to whisper. I still hear their voices in the hallways, sharp as scissors, cutting into the parts of you that were already so fragile. You folded yourself smaller and smaller, like one of those origami hearts we made in Art class, until one day you just… disappeared.
I close my eyes, and I am there again—perched on the rooftop of CHIJ Toa Payoh, the city stretched out below us like an unspoken promise. You asked me to jump with you. You said we’d fall together, that the wind would carry us somewhere kinder. Your fingers curled around mine, shaking, burning. "Together," you whispered, and for a breath, I believed we could defy gravity. But then your grip slackened, and I was left with nothing but the ghost of your warmth seared into my palm. You fell like a dying star, and I stood there, paralyzed, the hem of my pinafore trembling like a flag of surrender. I wanted to follow you—God, I wanted to—but my feet became anchors. When you let go, I screamed into the sky, but the city swallowed the sound.
I am so sorry, my love. Sorry that I was not as brave as you, or perhaps, not as broken. Sorry that they carved their hatred into your skin, that they spat words like blades and called it righteousness. Sorry that love—the most sacred thing—was made into something unholy in their mouths. They killed you before you ever reached that ledge. They made you a phantom long before your body touched the ground.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2025/03/to-my-chij-toa-payoh-schoolmate-whom-i.html
