Deborah Chow
Scar City
Scarcity isn’t the lack of abundance but the abundance of lack
They say when you grow old, your knees feel like cardboard and cobwebs grow over your pupils
While your friends die and your seed grow into middle-aged career-driven adults
drinking morning coffee out of polystyrene cups, going to the grind via commuter
Waiting for New Year’s or Christmas or a marriage or death before you shake hands with them.
You wonder about the times when things were tough; now you regret everything
Or regret nothing. It’s the same because the cobwebs spread down your neck from your eyes
A mildewed silence embracing your heart. You cry for lovers lost, mistakes made and smile
at what fun you had, the good you’ve done, the candles you blew out year after year
The scent of cakes, the after-taste of horrible meds disguised in pseudo-happy nursery
colours like baby pink and off-white, lilac and shades of pistachio
Your hands, they never grow old. Just freckled, spackled with beeswax and curled at the tips, shaking sideways, just like your ankles when you stand
You pretend to lose your mind so that you don’t have to walk the length of the corridor to
the loo. Did your parents do this before you? And your ancestors before them too?
Scarcity isn’t the lack of abundance but the abundance of lack
10 Things I want to tell you about the person I call myself
we're all losing our minds
between the peripheries of
jigsaw pieces
smiling into coffee cups
eyes fixated on screens dictating
how we run our lives
how we spend our pennies
how we treat people based on labels attached
to the flip-side of their clothes
(and where they went to school)
because no, we will not listen to
the 10 most important things
a boy (or) a girl
has to say, like:
(one) who they love
and (two) what they would be doing
if they had the money
the (three) people they’d die for
and the places they’d be
whose hands they’d hold (four)
(five) mountains they’d climb
whether they prefer (six) coffee or tea (?)
(seven) Sherlock or apple crumble
(eight) what makes them cry
and why
they'd rather lay 6 feet under
feeding daisies and lending
minerals to oak trees (nine)
we are all stardust. ZERO.
Scarcity isn’t the lack of abundance but the abundance of lack
They say when you grow old, your knees feel like cardboard and cobwebs grow over your pupils
While your friends die and your seed grow into middle-aged career-driven adults
drinking morning coffee out of polystyrene cups, going to the grind via commuter
Waiting for New Year’s or Christmas or a marriage or death before you shake hands with them.
You wonder about the times when things were tough; now you regret everything
Or regret nothing. It’s the same because the cobwebs spread down your neck from your eyes
A mildewed silence embracing your heart. You cry for lovers lost, mistakes made and smile
at what fun you had, the good you’ve done, the candles you blew out year after year
The scent of cakes, the after-taste of horrible meds disguised in pseudo-happy nursery
colours like baby pink and off-white, lilac and shades of pistachio
Your hands, they never grow old. Just freckled, spackled with beeswax and curled at the tips, shaking sideways, just like your ankles when you stand
You pretend to lose your mind so that you don’t have to walk the length of the corridor to
the loo. Did your parents do this before you? And your ancestors before them too?
Scarcity isn’t the lack of abundance but the abundance of lack
10 Things I want to tell you about the person I call myself
we're all losing our minds
between the peripheries of
jigsaw pieces
smiling into coffee cups
eyes fixated on screens dictating
how we run our lives
how we spend our pennies
how we treat people based on labels attached
to the flip-side of their clothes
(and where they went to school)
because no, we will not listen to
the 10 most important things
a boy (or) a girl
has to say, like:
(one) who they love
and (two) what they would be doing
if they had the money
the (three) people they’d die for
and the places they’d be
whose hands they’d hold (four)
(five) mountains they’d climb
whether they prefer (six) coffee or tea (?)
(seven) Sherlock or apple crumble
(eight) what makes them cry
and why
they'd rather lay 6 feet under
feeding daisies and lending
minerals to oak trees (nine)
we are all stardust. ZERO.
Deborah Chow is a linguist, translator and researcher. Besides designing postcards, she enjoys having fruit-flavoured whey smoothies and reading Edgar Allan Poe. Deborah is in the final year of her PhD in translation and cognitive linguistics and speaks 7 languages, 2 of which are dead.
