clockwise project – Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas

how it felt

Posted on November 24, 2012December 9, 2015 by violeteye in Thoughts

i last spoke with him on the phone on monday. he died on friday.

i did not hug nor kiss him when i first saw him lying there. it just did not seem right because i only said hello pa whenever we came to visit him when he was still alive.

i went and touched his hand though and looked at his sleeping face. this was the first time in a long time i looked at him more than just a few seconds. it was probably the first time ever.

and i wondered, no i asked, in my head. he should be able to hear my thoughts now, right? well, yeah, so i asked him how he felt. how it felt.

it rained very hard this afternoon

Posted on November 23, 2012December 9, 2015 by violeteye in Thoughts

it rained very hard this afternoon. i was still waiting for the taxi at the university lobby. it was particularly busy today. and i could hear people talking about it–staffs passing by, students shouting to each other, lecturers talking to their phones–like it was something that could give meaning to whatever they have been doing all day or are about to do when suddenly the skies turned grey and started to pour. i could feel that i had gradually let myself be sucked in again to the very life that suspended itself to routines. nothing could go wrong when we keep doing them. but the rain kept pouring still.

tick tock

Posted on November 14, 2012December 9, 2015 by violeteye in English, Poetry, Thoughts

father’s bed is made, but no one has changed his bed sheet since he died in his sleep almost two weeks ago.

there are two clocks in this room. they had been souvenirs from two different banks. and both of them let out incessant tick-tocking sounds,

which must have been the last sounds he had heard.

i put my hand on his pillow, sit on the bed and then lie down. i immediately realize that almost everything that can be seen from this position is still the same with what i had seen when i was still a child sleeping on this bed between my mother and father.

i get up and look at his things, scattered around his bed. never worn shirts and ties, still in their packaging. bed sheets, some old some new. house clothes, washed and folded. coins, in small plastic containers on his dressing table labeled Rp 25,- Rp 50,- Rp 100,- in his handwriting. and even more coins that he had yet organized, coins that have now been withdrawn from circulation.

no one was allowed in this room when he was still alive. except for my daughter.