lone stranger⭐
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published Sunday, 3 november 2024
on tigri sa chang
Koitadu | Content warning
Please first read about my writing in the Skribadorang or Writing section on the Igleza page here before reading the piece below so you have advance warning about the rather spicy things that I often like to write about, and why I choose to write about them, especially in terms of subverting unhealthy stereotypes about gay people, Kristang people, Creole people, Indigenous people, masculinity, neurodivergence, the body, healthy forms of attraction and sexuality, and using my writing to process the severe individual, collective and inter-generational trauma and abuse I have faced across my life.
I would do it all again:
be hurt.
Be destroyed.
Be made to fear
being a real gay Kristang man
just to see you smile.
Just to see you put
a flower in your hair,
and finally
while
away the time.
Learn not to care
about the traumas,
the horrors,
the lies.
Put a record on, sayang.
Let's dance around
the living night
and bring that dreaming joy back.
Whatever I gave of myself,
I did
so that my people
never again lack
respect.
Hope.
Strength.
And the knowledge that somewhere out there
some truly strange Eurasian dragonscholar
is finally assembling
the truths.
The heights.
The facts
that give us back who we truly are.
The research papers that reright history.
The poems and stories
that begin to repeal every scar.
This is to you
who made me reality
long before I knew my first word in English
would be star
and in Kristang?
Ardansa.
To you who fought for my right to exist.
To you who gave me my heart for all humanity.
My love for spreadsheets, and dictionaries, and lists:
may you dance
may you sing
and may you live in dreaming,
elysial bliss
for making me learn
that to be quing
is to make sure
we are all heard.
We all get to dream.
We are all allowed rebirth,
all cowgirls and cowboys and everything
that deserves to know its own worth.
We are all mentats
and xamatrang
and big fluffy Kristang cats
learning how to once again
love this Earth
and know that we will meet again.
We will see
that there is nothing braver
than someone who
despite everything
always remembers that because of you
he can.