Follow The White Rabbit

This is a poem I wrote at The Things We Carry, a storywalk I co-hosted for ESEA heritage month with Singaporean author Erni Salleh. We spent a lovely afternoon in the New Forest sharing stories and making connections from the prompts Erni provided and my cup felt very full of inspiration when we sat down to write with our collection of ESEA snacks (including white rabbit sweets). This is what poured out of me.

Follow the white rabbit down a tunnel you don't know where it goes. Past tumbles down on your head carried by invisible interconnected threads. Puppet strings inside your veins that respond, primal. The call of a bird of a place that is not your home, but sings to you. A smell of a dinner you've never eaten before that somehow feels familiar. It's the way a stranger on the bus has hands that look like your grandfather's. Recall the calluses of his grip. The way he snuffed out candles with his fingertips.

It's the stuffed bunny bought for your daughter that she would rub her face on when tired. The memory of a crockpot so full of food your postpartum muscles could hardly take it.

I run rabbit, I run so far and so fast trying to understand why the songs from World War Two are still stuck on a familial loop - a record with a groove where the vinyl just spins and spins never stopping.

My grandfather comes to me in dreams where he is 5 years old again, trying not to see the bodies piled upon the Burmese railway.

Back and back we go rabbit, and I'm back in the kitchen peeling apples in that long continual loop.

Carving away,

chipped apple falling on the floor

like an offering.