Dusting the weather; I checked my back, and my damn dear drenching sweating without pocari sweat. I swore to the sky that I wouldn’t write shit about coming back to Jakarta–oh lord here I am vomiting words. My grammar is rusty and my speech bubbles aren’t popping and yada yada yada, I always have reasons to not write good, nor to write for good. I keep complaining out of confusion of what should I do and not do, chirping ignorance against the prevalence of networking. Let me just hang out with my friends and listen to their stories of their friends’ stories of their friends.

Complaining over complaining more and more complaint and plaint and plain plaint. A rhyming game only works when I have rhythm. I’m already losing to the pantun masc and gurindam femme, and yet I love them with all of my heart more than the puisi lady and prosa gentleman.

I keep staring at my beloveds’ small fangs and their bunny teeth-with-gap as they are laughing over a dozen of video reels.

There’s no comeback, to be honest. It’s a new sphere, a new space, a new series of commerce to purchase. Money is difficult to gain yet easier to spend, not so much to spare. I once again remind myself that I’d promised to the broken trees that I wouldn’t utter sentences about going back to Jakarta. There’s no going back.

My head keeps its dissonance only to find more comfort in the mundanity and speculation of MRT, TiJe buses, Jak-[insert numbers], you name it. I hope to not make romance with the city here. Weathering the dusts; I checked my front, and my damn dear scar on the chest aching in slight, embraced by the polluted sun rays without sunscreen.

The hypothetical “they” often say that art and literature will save us from being dense and dull, making us feel a little bit more alive. They make me understand my anger and hatred more. I take pride in having this much of hate without being that dumb contrarian with reading skill so bad; I really want to smack him in the head for being a dull graduate student [I know I should’ve just tweeted this or whatever].

To write without taking any stakes I have remained my ways of living; that perhaps I really don’t know how to be a good university worker and will never know how. Then I keep wondering and searching and occasionally writing about them. Out of the spiraling of depressive excess, out of the error of regrets and disappointment, out of the flailing words trying to reach younger human who want to learn–I try to keep my walk steady.

So here I go, here I go, to the sound of your stories, dear queeings, until the neighbors scream at us for being too loud and proud, until the neighbors cry against our arrogance, until the neighbors join us in this euphoric cruise we call annoyingly liberatory joy.