If you should see me dead tomorrow

The land feels weird after being cradled by the waves. My stomach still convulses to the motion of being rocked back and forth, but the still clouds above tells me I’m just as stiff as them. I feel pathetic for having to die this way. They’ll say I did it on a whim, that it was a tragedy of forethought and rationality. That I had so much potential. The dance team will probably regret rejecting me: she wouldn’t have lasted for long, anyway. And how will he react, if at all? At least they’ll find the waves guilty. I had agreed to ‘race you to the horizon!’ and was as willing to follow the excuse as a trained dog on a leash. But mom will probably blame me for this, for going too far in this pathetic fashion. Pathetic, what a dull-pinch sound of a word. ‘Pa’, the pursed lips; ‘the’, the tap at the teeth, and ‘tic’, a soft clench of the jaw, producing a crispy sound, like cracking open a fresh apple. 

The sky is getting darker, and the deep waters far away are dollar-bill green. I used to pass by the CBD often. They had skyscrapers of every solemn funeral trench coat colour, so the most vibrant was a beige building with green windows of the same dollar-bill shade. It was most definitely a finance office building. The windows reflect the streets below, so if you gaze down at it from a good angle, you could see the reflection of cars climbing up the windows and disappearing at a turn. Even though my mom insists on the contrary---mostly because she doesn’t want to appear as a real Scrooge---she is devoted to the God of Fortune. On the night before Lunar New Year, she brought home a poster of him on those glittery pop-up cutouts to stick to the front door. The damn thing fell off a month later, and I found it lying on the apartment floor, but she rehung it the same day. I don’t mean offend you, God of Fortune, but she needs to take a hint. I watched her plaster the double sided tape layer by layer on the back of the poster, and rip it off strand by strand like a madman. Her pajamas were smothered in glitter when she returned. The salt is drying on my skin, and I feel a numb sting on the wound on my foot. Mom interprets everything I do as a personal attack. You scratched your foot until it bled? Don’t I have enough to worry about? It doesn’t hurt, by the way. Not when I take off my socks after school and the scab peels off with it, leaving a glossy fleshy dent behind. The skin around the wound flushes in frustration, having to start all over again. What do these scab-repairers and Sisyphus have in common? They’ll never learn to stop working to stop losing. When will they realise through their obstinate dignity that they don’t have to finish anything? To leave and diffuse their worries into the universe, so that it will eventually latch onto and plague someone else. Sometimes it’s the best thing to do. But it is shamelessly programmed to repair, and sees the millionth scab it paves down as no different than the first. I have mixed feelings for this type of person. They deserve both respect and a good jibe.

I used to keep a diary entry titled: If you should see me dead tomorrow. I disclosed all my secrets held in for the day there, but weeks continued when I didn’t write anything because I had none. It was addressed to others who would mourn me at my funeral, because I never ended up doing anything for myself. Everything that I started doing used to be for my own benefit, but it always turned into a favor for others. I will meet your expectations. I will mourn mine in birthday wishes and bedtime prayers. I’m an atheist, but sometimes I pray because it’s cathartic. And when it doesn’t come true, I always find solace in a good excuse for my failures by accusing an imaginary person. I wished for a golden retriever for my birthday ever since I was a child. It was the only reason why I wanted to be a vet when I grew up, yet to this day mom still thinks that I’m actually interested in the field of medicine. Scratch that, dogs hate vets anyway. I want to be an owner when I grow up. Will I! 

I can smile by just thinking about dogs. I’ve never seen him smile, or glean a grin under his mask from a slight wrinkle around his eyes. I wish I looked at him more often. My smiles are mostly never genuine anyway, a motion with no emotional attachment, executed only out of habit, politeness, or embarrassment. My smile is worth nothing. Why do things have to be sacred and rare to worth something? The stars are an exception, I guess. They stay every night, regular and endless, but maybe it’s their constancy that makes them a rarity. Will we ever get tired of staring up at them? I think I should die with my eyes open. How pretty it must be to be found with stars gilded in your eyes. 

Final diary entry: Someone--I don’t remember who it was--always told me that before you die, all your life flashes before you, so you better live it to the fullest in order to watch the summary of your life without regrets. It made no sense. Still, I’ve been waiting for it, waiting for the closure of my life thrown back at me in a flash. Maybe I blinked and missed it. Or was I supposed to close my eyes? Is my life too minuscule, too trivial to be summarized? Alright, I can do it myself. 

But I feel weirdly present. I've never been so wholly, completely here. I can even feel it, nestled between the air and sand, feeling pressure from both: the curve of my hips and arched back in the sand; the chilling strand of seaweed buried in the nook of my collarbone; my torso pulsing to each inhale and exhale. I feel full, even though I haven’t eaten for a while. The sand feels warm in my hair. I bet that if I really try, I can feel the earth spinning on its axis. The sound of the waves that washed me ashore falls rhythmically to the soft snore of my breath. The waves   are    my      breath. They breathe, and therefore I am.