To them, it never mattered how or why I came to be this marionette, only
that they caught me half-revealed by a flickering bulb in my foreman’s shack
at the mining pool’s edge. Imagine my frustration when the megamall was built—
hard to scare construction workers when you’ve kept them staring at their feet.

Last week, my wife whom you may know (she works by the highway, waiting
for gentle souls to offer help before unhinging her jaw and swallowing them whole)
reported that no one would stop for the old lady who wandered onto the road.
Sports cars like silver boulders just swerving around that unsteady silhouette,
splashing cold grey water on her like the strokes of a rattan cane. By morning
she was found on the retirement centre’s yard; no one quite understood the tale
of a snake-toothed woman cradling her and how dotted road markings look
so much like White Rabbit milk candy from up high.

As for myself? Trapped on your premises, I sprang upon a young man
working late one night and can you believe he couldn’t even speak Hakka?
He came to reset the rat traps, and when I told my wife
how he swept one bloated mother and a litter of dead pups
into his black plastic bag without a second glance or sigh,
we agreed the world was diving into a dark, incenseless exorcism.

Dear Property Developer, from one monster to another:
I’m scared. I have nowhere to hang from but your air-con unit,
and it makes me shiver all night.