There is fire coursing through my blood. It is not supposed to be there. I am not meant to be born of flame. All my life I have known only cold touches. From the moment I began to remember the notion of a moment, there were my mother’s fingertips pressing so ly against my shoulder, spreading frost across my skin. She would keep her fingers there, clasping lightly. My mother is snow. She could be gentle as the powder that envelops a town on the first winter’s day. An entire town’s worth she covers with care. She is loving, she has enough to share. She is empathetic. She is the snow that every innocent child wishes for. But my mother is snow. She melts easily. She is empathetic to the point that she is easily moldable. She takes whatever shape or form is necessary to survive to the extent that she sacrifices herself; but she does not realise that even a child can take her and roll her up, carve her out into a person so different from who she once was. Someone with eyes of coal, darkened from what she has had to see, and what she had to endure. Someone with frail, stickly arms reaching out; but for what? Is she asking for help? Is she asking for love? Is she holding her arms out in defeat? In praise? No one would know. You might look at her face to tell but her eyes are still dark as spent coal, with no glowing ember in sight. Her nose is bright orange, caked with layers of cosmetics to cover up the wrinkles in her skin and the heaviness beneath her eyes. Her mouth is contorted into a perpetual smile. Because she cannot afford not to smile. She is not allowed to be hurt. Too many people depend on her. No matter that she has been trampled too many times by unrelenting, sleazy, unforgiving men. She is not allowed to break. She will be severely punished, shoveled out the door to god knows where, if she does. Instead she deludes herself. For what can we do in such a place but do the exact same thing? She deludes herself that someday, there is salvation. There is relief. She will melt, return to the waters she was made in, and return. When she returns, she will finally be able to break free. I have seen but only a glimpse of the blizzard that comes. The battering, teeth-chattering, injuring snowstorm that snuffs out even the strongest of flames. When she hits, she hits painfully. But once that’s over, she will return back to snow. To be wanted, wished for, and lured in for her empathy. To be trampled and molded and worn out once again. To be stripped of her humanity, her choice, her own body, to be used. She is my mother. She is snow. My father is ice. There is nothing good to say about ice. Ice is cold. Ice is sharp. It weaves between the cracks of your limbs and snaps them cleanly off. If you stumble, make one mistake, the ice will catch you, but not without bruises and blood. My father was cold. My father is sharp. And he certainly smeared his legacy with bruises and blood. He was once free-spirited, a free-thinker, and a rebel who could not be held back. He was like water, who took the path of least resistance. He rose to prominence, hailed by people. As someone who protected, nourished, and saved lives. He rose up to the top of the ranks like mist floating to the heavens. But all that comes up must come down, and his fall from grace was spectacular. Water is known as the beginning of life, it is essential, so why did it surprise, hurt, and offend the very same who praised him when he began a life of his own? When he made a life from his own. When he made me. Too cold a winter battered and hardened his heart. They mocked him and cast him aside, raising him up and knocking him down over and over again until the weight of sins were too heavy to bear. He is frozen, like ice. And he fell from the heavens with anger. Anger that dents, that destroys, that ruins. He was hailed and now he is hail. Uncontrollably destructive ice that knocks children on the head until they bleed and faint. Ice that breaks windows. Ice that ruins houses. There is nothing good to say about ice. Nor will there ever be. He can be the ice that freezes over a lake. Simmering, dangerous, but subtly so. You don’t see the living creatures that drown beneath a frozen lake. You only realise what exactly you had gotten yourself into when you fall through the ice, and you are drowning. You gasp, you scream, you flail. But there is no escape when all around you and all you know is suffocating freezing cold water and there is nothing to grab onto but the serrated, slicing clutches of ice. He lures you. He makes you remember hot summer days where there is no ice. Where there is no him. He contorts you. You terrify yourself at the thought of the unknown, of the thought of no ice. How could you have ever known a world with no ice? You remember that ice does sometimes have its fair share of tolerable moments, like how it belongs in a drink. Moments so miniscule and fleeting, melting away in less than an hour or two, diluting the illusion of normalcy as if it were the taste of whiskey on the rocks that he would have so o en. He makes you long for the cold, but like a drunk shoved into a cold shower, you start to shiver and flinch once the sensation hits you. And suddenly ice isn’t so appealing anymore. Once he hits you. The memories you put aside and locked away come tumbling back like an avalanche. Then you realise: he is just as bad as you once thought, perhaps even worse. He is my father. He is ice. I am fire. I was born with fire in my heart. It is an eternal fire. One that does not easily lose its flame. No matter how dim the light gets, whether it be starved of air or hungering for fuel, it burns still. I have been told conflicting things about fire. Fire wreaks havoc. My grandmother, who had raised me, always told me not to play with fire. It is destructive, it is murderous, and it is uncontrollable. She’s lived through three wars, a er all. Three devastatingly catastrophic wars, dominated by fire, of which her memories are coloured with ash and filled with the putrid scent of smoke and burning flesh. Yet, telling kids not to do something almost always yields the opposite effect of what you intended. They would not know any better. Sometimes, they will even misunderstand. I did not know any better, even worse, I gravely misunderstood. The Fat Man and the Little Boy were just characters on an old 1940s TV Show she used to watch. Agent Orange was a world renowned super-spy I aspired to become. I pouted and threw tantrums, dissatisfied during dinner when she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Here comes the airplane!’ like I had seen other kids be told on TV. Fortunately I grew older. And learned to become wary of playing with fire. Fire is comfort. Fire can be beneficial, at least when controlled. I had a large extended family who all lived on several large plots of arable land. One that I hadn’t visited enough. Whenever I’d go, there would be fire all around. Fire that burned at the end of mosquito coils to keep them from biting our legs as we sat around and had a chat deep into the night. Fire that burned lightly beneath a large pot to keep the rice congee warm on a cold winter’s night. Fire that glowed ephemeral through the lightning bugs littering up the sky. Fire that glowed through the translucent paper lanterns we would release into the cool air, their flights lasting as long as the fire would permit. Fire that burns beneath a cast iron wok, burning carefully, filling the wind with the aroma of garlic, sauce, and spice, bursting into the air and enveloping the sizzling food with only a slight tilt of the wok Fire that slowly withers away a candle into dripping wax, solidifying itself on the solid asphalt as you march behind statues of saints during a fiesta or trail behind a hearse during a funeral. Fire that represents tradition. That represents family, home, culture, and all that I have le behind. It represents a home I can never return to. It is bittersweet. It is bittersweet comfort. I long for this fire. I do not have it anymore. Fire is what you’re destined to burn in forever. I have heard enough from them. The pastors and preachers, priests and politicians. They are all one and the same. They are the fire that starts wars, that burns heretics, and that oppresses those who dare speak against them. They call us no more than animals. But are we the animals? When you conflagrate and conclude the lives of all that you come across? You spent centuries sailing the seas and setting fire to homes. You spent centuries pillaging and raping all that would not bend to your will. You spent centuries convincing the otherwise sheltered and safe that they are destined to burn in flames. We are the scapegoats. We are to blame for all your inadequacy. We are to blame for your lust for power. We are temptresses, the whores of your supposed Babylon, leading all into a life of sin and hedonism. We are the reason for your tornadoes, your storms, your hurricanes, and your forces of nature that you cannot rationalise. Your holy books tell us that we have shaken our male members in a place where it doesn’t belong, and so your Father will shake the earth. Indeed! Surely, it is because of us, the sexual deviants who smear your Father’s name and smear each other with the curses of Asmodeus. Surely, it is not because of you and your clergy, who glut innocent children with your worldly flesh? Surely you have not shaken your members in obscene places and corrupted naive minds? Of course not. You are the house of God. You cannot commit those atrocities. You are not supposed to. You are not supposed to mark your bodies. You are not supposed to pierce your ears. You are not supposed to consume pork nor shellfish. You are not supposed to wear mixed fabrics. But we can ignore those can’t we? They are too archaic for your standards. You are not supposed to fornicate. You are not supposed to terminate pregnancy. But you can ignore those can’t you? They do not apply to you, as your Father has ordained that you are the exception, on the condition that you launch vitriol at others who do the same. You are not supposed to anger. You are not supposed to commit violence. You are not supposed to beat your child bloody and leave him to die. It is done anyway. It is done far too o en and far too much. And when I speak up. I’m told that I’m worthless. Suddenly, the facade of this boy, who’s had to grow up so quickly, tears in half like the temple veil. I can’t keep up the formal words and metaphors anymore. No more sugar coating and flowery writing. I was abused. I was beaten until I couldn’t walk. I was raped. I was constrained by the authorities I trusted to protect me. I was silenced. I was suppressed to the point that I couldn’t take it. Then they told me I was going to hell. Eternally damned to burn. Fire is fading away, only embers remain. Sometimes the fire inside you flickers out. The elements had battered it too heavily. The snow melts. She sobs and weeps, as she knows at this moment that the family she has tried for so long to hold together, cannot be fixed any longer, and her tears sprinkle over the flames. The ice turns violent. He is quick to anger. He is not concerned with your bloodied wrists and ankles nor the bruises on your neck. He is not concerned with the wounds on your groin nor the bleeding from your rear. He is only concerned with who did this to you. And whether or not you allowed it to happen. And to his logic, obviously you did. And you see his eyes change, and he cannot even bear to look at you. He is disgusted, and he releases his emotions the only way he knows how. With an unsheathing of a knife, a kick in the forehead, more bruises to display, and a cloth and a bucket of water. Then you run. As fast as you can and as far away as you can make it, unable to cry, your tears already spent. You have nowhere to go and no plan in mind. You are alone. Then you find just a slight moment of respite, and the fire resurfaces, if only slightly. But all you can think about, all that you are close to doing, is snuffing the fire out completely. The final stages of hypothermia involve paradoxical undressing, where you discard your clothes, more o en than not counterproductively and fatally, as your thoughts are altered and you mistakenly believe it’s the best solution. It is exactly like that. You seek the cold. You let it take you. Fire is perseverance, the will to stay alive. But that didn’t happen to me. And believe me, I’ve tried, multiple times, even. There are things in this world, however, that work hard to combat the cold. To dispel snow and melt through ice. Since the dawn of the walking man, fire has always been our weapon against the unknown. Fire is our beacon, it leads us forward, and we will spare no expenses, mount insurmountable journeys, and defy gravity, just to keep it alive. Ordinary people, people you never thought to look twice at, who gain absolutely nothing, fight to keep fire alive. To keep your fire alive. A lady passing by, who stopped her car to check on the running child, freezing in the winter cold. A police officer who smiles at you even at the worst of times. Paramedics who congratulate you, and cry tears as they help you out of a place they could never help themselves out of. A woman who tries her best to prepare and make adjustments for the cold, despite how unpredictable. A ward of nurses who blockade the door and tame unruly flames when the cold comes knocking. Teachers who do whatever they can for you, even when those around them have given up on you completely. ‘Devout’ churchgoers who write you a secret letter and offer their support despite them being trapped in their positions. Not one, not two, but three kind families who offered their homes and their livelihoods for your life. Friends that offer whatever money they can when you don’t have enough to buy a simple pair of shoes. Cats that snuggled up to you when you’d be crying in the dead of night. They kept the fire going. They fuelled my resolve. They are my oxygen, keeping me alive and letting me breathe without pain or discomfort. I am content with who I am, and I burn brightly. I am alive. I am become flame.