To my CHIJ Toa Payoh schoolmate whom I loved so very much, sorry I didn’t jump with you. |
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By everything_at_a_standstill  To the girl who became starlight My dearest love, I write to you with trembling hands, words bleeding like grief, like a wound that will not clot. The world still turns, but I have not moved since that day. Since the moment you let go. Since the moment I did not. Now and then I still sit in the CHIJ chapel again, where we used to hide during recess. The sun hits the stained glass the same way, painting colours on the pews like you used to say, “Look, it’s heaven’s confetti.” But it doesn’t feel like confetti anymore. It feels like shards. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t hold your hand when the world turned its back. They called us “wrong” for loving too loudly in a school that taught us to whisper. I still hear their voices in the hallways, sharp as scissors, cutting into the parts of you that were already so fragile. You folded yourself smaller and smaller, like one of those origami hearts we made in Art class, until one day you just… disappeared. I close my eyes, and I am there again—perched on the rooftop of CHIJ Toa Payoh, the city stretched out below us like an unspoken promise. You asked me to jump with you. You said we’d fall together, that the wind would carry us somewhere kinder. Your fingers curled around mine, shaking, burning. "Together," you whispered, and for a breath, I believed we could defy gravity. But then your grip slackened, and I was left with nothing but the ghost of your warmth seared into my palm. You fell like a dying star, and I stood there, paralyzed, the hem of my pinafore trembling like a flag of surrender. I wanted to follow you—God, I wanted to—but my feet became anchors. When you let go, I screamed into the sky, but the city swallowed the sound. I am so sorry, my love. Sorry that I was not as brave as you, or perhaps, not as broken. Sorry that they carved their hatred into your skin, that they spat words like blades and called it righteousness. Sorry that love—the most sacred thing—was made into something unholy in their mouths. They killed you before you ever reached that ledge. They made you a phantom long before your body touched the ground. Now, every morning, I fasten my pinafore too tight, as if it could keep me from unravelling. I walk past your locker, half-expecting to see your laugh etched into the rust. Instead, I leave frangipanis there—the ones from the garden. Their scent reminds me of the time you tucked one behind my ear and whispered, “Golden things don’t apologize for glowing.” You were always golden. I’m trying to live for you. To wear our love like the uniform I never got to burn. I try to speak up now, even when my voice shakes. I tell them your story—our story—because they don’t get to erase you. You were not a phase. Not a sin. Not a ghost. You were a supernova, and they were just too small to see it. I still wear the necklace you gave me, the tiny silver star pressing against my collarbone like a brand. Some nights, I clutch it so tightly it imprints into my skin, as if I could press you back into existence. I search for you in the static of the radio, in the hush of the wind threading through the trees. Sometimes, I call your name into the night and wonder if somewhere, somehow, you might still hear me. I miss you in every atom of this place. The canteen’s kaya toast tastes bitter without your jokes. The science lab’s periodic table feels incomplete—they should’ve added “Her” somewhere between hydrogen and hope. But I’m learning to find you elsewhere: in the way the moon clings to the sky, in the courage of a sunflower turning toward light, in the quiet hum of my own pulse. You’re here. Would you hate me for staying? For waking up each morning, for breathing in air that should have filled your lungs too? Would you have wanted me to follow, or to carry you in the hollow of my ribs, to love enough for the both of us? I do not know. I may never know. But I do know this: you are not forgotten. You are the hush before the dawn, the exhale of the tide, the last flicker of gold before the sun drowns into the sea. You are everywhere, and yet nowhere. And I—I am just a girl with a ghost for a heart. I won’t lie—some days, the guilt is a fist around my throat. I should’ve fought harder. Loved louder. But I’m staying, my love. I’m staying to turn their shame into a war cry. To make sure no other girl learns how heavy silence can be. When I see you again—and I will—I’ll bring all the sunrises I lived for you. We’ll dive into the stars, and this time, we’ll fly. Until then, keep sending me feathers. Keep humming in the rain. Keep being the light I couldn’t hold. Yours always, in the spaces between life and death |
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