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Tiny light blooms in my pitch-black void,
a petunia greets me shyly.
I ask her name.
"Hope", she says.
Jiji Lubis is a journalist, news editor, and columnist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. An occasional hermit with seven cats, she writes poetry as a therapy for her prolonged mental health battle. Her poems have been by *82 Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Messy Misfits Club, and Raven Muse Magazine. Her Instagram is @ink.trospective.
There will come a time when we question
why the rain suddenly drops on us
on a beautiful summer day,
why the train skips our station,
why they never change the street lamp
that's been off for years, and
why this simple task takes time
and robs us of joy.
And there will also come a day when we question
why we take the wrong bus,
forcing us to walk for miles
under the burning sun
on an uphill road,
yet with a light step, humming a lively tune.
Jiji Lubis is a journalist, news editor, and columnist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. An occasional hermit with seven cats, she writes poetry as a therapy for her prolonged mental health battle. Her poems have been by *82 Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Messy Misfits Club, and Raven Muse Magazine. Her Instagram is @ink.trospective.
These questions are coming to me lately: “Why did you do this and that?” Why talk to them? What new obsession grips you now? Why be a busybody?” Well, the answer is I’ve lost around three years in pitch-black darkness, a hazy maze with no exit. Good days were books, movies, games; the rest were sitting motionless on the sofa, from sunrise to orange sky. Alone, yet eyes were on me, alone, yet threats lingered. A slight pain was chronic illness; movement, a capital punishment.
Oh, don’t speak of outside. Trapped on a crossing bridge, too afraid to look down, sweating buckets on elevated roads, breathless in elevators. Flights booked but never boarded, hysteria at airport check-ins. What was I thinking when I couldn’t feel safe at levels above the ground floor?
Nearly a thousand hollow days, lost interest in all I held dear: football, manga, café hopping, friends. Scared of dying painfully, lost the joy of living, hoped life would end in a blink. Soul and body separated, grounded only by inflicted pain.
So when you ask what I’m doing now, I am reclaiming lost years, my golden age, feeling the sunshine’s heat, pitter-patter bringing joy. Seizing the moment, fulfillment, small achievements, failures, irritable stress, understandings, disagreements, overwhelmingness. Every feeling that makes life worth living, once again.
Jiji Lubis is a journalist, news editor, and columnist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. An occasional hermit with seven cats, she writes poetry as a therapy for her prolonged mental health battle. Her poems have been by *82 Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Messy Misfits Club, and Raven Muse Magazine. Her Instagram is @ink.trospective.