Let Me Have My Last, Very Last, Wish, Please Poem by Bening Parwitasukci

When I am lying here on my deathbed, I want you
not to let a single tear fall
on your chubby cheeks.
My dear, as I want you
to remember not the time
when I shed my invisible tears
for the lonely nights I spent waiting
for you to come home sharing
our dreams of the future
of our only son who
kept asking why dad has rarely had
time to play and laugh together.

When I’m lying on my deathbed, I want you
not to put any single flower
on my plain, wooden coffin
My dear, since I want you
to keep in mind not the time
when birthdays and anniversaries
went coldly unnoticed.

I am going far away right now
to a place I’ve been longing, where
I can lick my pain like
dogs and cats healing their wounds with
their magic curing saliva.

I’m going far, very far away to a place
so quiet that I can only hear my own heartbeat
beating as hard as always
trying to let me know that I am
still having all my dreams come true
not of ours since I have forgotten if we have any.
It’s all my dreams that come true
as finally I know that I have
some things that I can call mine.
All these dreams are my very own.

Let me have mine since
I’ve kept trying to keep all feelings of
anger, sadness, and resentment hidden in the
darkest part of my heart untouched
flickering weakly but
have no energy to grow into flame
too weak even to notice it exists.

Now let me rest peacefully as
all these are mine now. They have died
together with my body
buried deeply into the darkness of the earth.
Let me live a new life where
all my dreams come true
where loneliness and pain do
not hurt me anymore since
I can have all my dreams come true
as they are all mine, my very own.


[Yogyakarta 22 October 2003 (21: 35) ]