Go On

Himas portrays yet another beautiful story of love, loss, and longing. While her previous entry presents a world of potential liberation in the midst of impossible challenges, this current story tells of the soul-crushing loss and loneliness that queer people of lesser resources face from hate crime and environmental exploitation on a regular basis.

Author Himas Nur Illustrator Jes & Cin Wibowo Translator Gisela Swaragita & Bonnibel Rambatan

i know my path is not solitary
even as i gaze into the eyes of ambiguity
even as i step on thorns beneath me
i walk with a heavy gait as bullets adorn my spine
that door will not wait, so i shall leave it behind

The third station before the last stop. Kla, with a large carrier bag on their back, hurries into one of the cars of the train. All of the seats are taken. Again, they have to stand up along the journey. Kla holds on to a hand pole, trying to stand still facing the entrance door.

It’s dark. There is nothing but their reflection as they struggle to stay on their feet, jostling with other passengers. The train starts to move. The room feels increasingly suffocating. While their back is killing them, Kla’s thoughts go on. Noisy thoughts, as chaotic as the cacophony around them.

Kla looks back at their reflection on the entrance door, watching the details of their body, the traces of their past. They try to remember everything they can, as a preparation before submitting themself to the almighty capital city.

i can’t be the only one trying to forsake
all those memories of school breaks
birthday cakes
cats with furs soft as milkshakes
hopscotch, hide and seek, ladders and snakes
all the games we partake
in the wide fields that give us headaches

Blurry.

Kla has been preparing for a long time. Ever since Spe, the kid from the nearby village, joined the intensive Islamic lessons at the mosque near their house. The fasting month became happy days.

They knew something was not right. They didn’t know what it was. But they would be labelled as different. Whatever that label was.

Seven years after junior high, Kla understood that not many would. The fantasy of a friendly and safe city started to occupy their mind. Monthly discussions that gave strength… fun costume parties… Long nights of joy… everything felt very real in their Twitter timeline.

Kla has prepared themself to leave the suffocating air and the barren land that would never take their side, nor Spe’s.

i can’t be the first in realisation
that rainbows are thicker than blood
where cusses and curses flood
in respite and relaxation
as the self is no longer under the thumb of colonisation

To stay in the rural lands means eternal colonisation. What is deemed natural is no longer important. They are fit to be cut, exploited, and sucked dry by corporations. Those large machines still stand there, machines that have existed far before Kla’s father and mother were born.

Smoke fills the air. An omen of people choosing to misunderstand how nature works. They choose to be choked. Or rather, they enjoy the sight of the outcasts and the poor being choked.

This was not the first time that the peatland fire had taken casualties. And Kla was still there. Looking at Spe’s cold body.

Kla had just told both families that Spe was their life partner, that Spe was everything to them. Kla decided to talk before they finally leave. Going on to the great unknown.

But Kla knows that they will go on, and they will go on…