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We Made It

Authors
  • avatar
    Name
    Derek Hum
    Twitter

Those days were no halcyon.
They were a dare, a dive,
Dangerous from the beginning
They had called
Us, with honeyed voices,
Pride and glory they lauded
Us. And we believed –

We laboured, we effervescenced, we evolved
Through fire alarms, lift posters, town halls,
Petitions, sit-ins, supreme sauces
We created, pioneered, trail-blazed
Learned Across Boundaries.
We did right.
We did our best.
We made it

Too close to the sun.
When they could not clip our wings
They tore them out and stitched New ones
Together, fabricated from the mould we broke.
Good Job! They exclaimed
This is your decade-shy legacy
Neatly wrapped in a day
In Singapore for Singapore:
Crushed hearts, stifled screams, nursing nostalgia
A discrete divorce, defamatory disowning,
The death of a loved one
Trapped in the archives behind heavy stone,
Yet lives on in us.