Stephanie Chan (b. 1987)
SELECTED POEMS
Umbrella
My grandmother used to warn me to never bring an open umbrella
into the house. She said I would bring evil spirits inside.
Said ghosts found shelter in the shadows under open umbrellas,
And they would follow us into our homes if they had half a chance.I used to wonder where these ghosts went when umbrellas were closed.
Did this mean every umbrella had its very own ghosts? Did ghosts share
umbrellas? Did ghosts come out in the rain, looking for umbrellas to haunt?I read somewhere that every year fifty thousand umbrellas are lost on the MRT.
By which I mean fifty thousand umbrellas get found by MRT staff in carriages,
on platforms, on benches, in toilets. I know I’m probably
responsible for at least five of them this year. Because after the rain, its easyto forget what you no longer need. The way our brains lose their hold
on old memories to make space for new ones. Something deep inside
decides for us what’s worth remembering and what’s not. Names
and dates and what we had for breakfast on the 3rd of Septemberdisappearing as easily as that $4 umbrella you bought at 7-11
when you got stranded in that thunderstorm. And I wonder
if every forgotten umbrella has a ghost of its own stuck inside,
waiting in that great MRT lost item repository for the daythey will be free to haunt a new house. Umbrellas were never
meant to be permanent, more like mobile bus stops to bring us
safely one more solid shelter to the next: keeping us safe from
sunburn, from colds, from pneumonia.But isn’t every structure here temporary in some way?
only around for as long as someone decides necessary,
until they think up a better use of where we lay our heads
until they can exchange the land for more money,
until the memories are older than we have space for.Then disappeared. Then we say “But I could have sworn
---it was just there! Just around that corner,
across the road….I swear that wasn’t there last Friday
But it was there when I was here last year, last month,
last week. Yesterday.”They say it is easy to forget things you no longer have any use for.
How buildings get torn down without so much as an online petition to save them.
How markets get lost without so much as an angry whisper.If a hundred-year-old tree gets cut down in the middle of Bishan
without anyone writing into the Straits Times Forum page about it,
does it make a sound?Where do we go when our stories have been washed away?
Who will warn our grandchildren of the ghosts in open umbrellas?So hold on to your umbrella, your home, your stories
while you still can, before you become just another ghost
searching for shelter. Because once our flesh turns to dust
we are no more than the memories we etch in people’s minds,
no more than the sum of the myths we once told one another.
