--- Theodore Wei Changsheng

My aunt lives across the Klang River and she can’t read or write. Someone takes her to the wet market every morning 
to choose her white meat and vegetables. They demand the ones that are hers because she gets an automatic discount on 
day-old pomfrets and chicken bones. Beansprouts are always cheap because of overstock. People here keep their food 
for longer because the trash is taken out everyday and removed everyday. 

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The hole in her roof lets in Bangladeshi workers from construction across the road. There’s little else to take in the 
house – a mahogany cabinet with Peranakan tiles, some home-made quilts stuffed into ziplocks; and pillows filled with 
damp wool, fitted with ribbed cotton. So the Indians have little to do but watch her videos left for her by good 
neighbours in a twine basket beside the storm drain. They help themselves to yesterday’s yam rice, hiking up their open 
voile dhotis like a valance.

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These thieves seem to have forgotten themselves.

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Seated along the storm drain, they are watching my aunt feed that stray cat chicken bones wrapped in newspaper. 
Another aunt died just months back. Some capillary burst in her head like a fractal, Nelson says. He is now chopping 
his head with the blunt side of his right hand, to splice his left brain. People don’t always know when Nelson is 
laughing at himself and when he’s dead serious.

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We are a different kind of minority! Nelson hollers this from the toilet, like a lead from a bit of hard news. I know he’s 
gesturing in the direction of Malaysia or any other muddied state of affairs for that matter. I’m finally coming to terms 
with the idea that we think ourselves out of situations, weeds growing wild in our heads to bloom. Even weeds want 
warmth and to bloom. And rooms become smaller along with flowerbeds; the settees we’ve outgrown start settling too 
into steadier, calmer comforts. But Nelson keeps telling me to find him in the river.

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The kittens have found another home, better balls of wool to entangle in, to worm and wriggle their way out of. Nelson 
is smiling at the idea – more ideas of new homes for the homeless. He thinks of me and sinks into the rocking chair I 
gave him; it wombs him like water. He raps his fingers on the lacquered jack-in-the-box that tosses its black puppet 
strings out as if breaking surface for air. That too was one of my year-end gifts. There are so many gifts that remain 
unopened, their mildewed ribbons weighing themselves into petal puddles. They look like wilting violets in purple 
pots. One day, Nelson will remember they’re for him and throw them out or keep them under his bed or tear through 
them to see what my second guesses were.

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Maybe one day, Nelson will forget he was ever angry with me for never liking his surprises or not bothering to separate 
quarters from nickels. Or ever once going home with him.