The Rainbow Connection Issue 01

Photographer’s Note For the second consecutive year, Pink Dot was held online.

In lieu of a 25 000 strong crowd gathered in a park, we gathered around our computers to watch a myriad of performances and interviews from the safety of our own homes. And of course, we lit up our homes in pink.

“I wish we could meet up in real life,” my friend C said morosely to me. Over Discord, of course.

We were watching the Pink Dot livestream together, along with about 30 000 strangers.

“I know,” I said, equally morose.

I glanced at the bright pink LOVE light that hung on my window, held up precariously by washi tape. Backwards, it read EVOL in a cursive font.

C and Gale had given it to me last year as a birthday present, just in time for Pink Dot 2019. I hadn’t thought I would have use for it for another year. I thought by now, we would have gone back to the park, complaining about the loud music over cheap apple cider.

I don’t know the future of Pink Dot. Will participants of Pink Dot 14 be required to turn on their Bluetooth before making their way into the park premises? Will SafeEntry records reveal every reluctant queer, every one-foot-out-ofthe-closet teenager to their frowning parents? I remember friends quietly changing out of their pink shirts before heading home in an unobtrusive white, friends ducking under widebrimmed hats whenever they so much as heard the click of a shutter. What will happen, next year?

I remember many things, and think of many more yet to come. For now, I bathe in the warm glow of my EVOL lights, and feel the warmth of my friends. This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Ariana Grande? That’s straight people music.

TW: Use of q-slur, mention of possibility of forced outing

Media has long been considered the voice of the public, a platform where communities can seek solace, find representation, and let their voices be heard. As such, it is of no surprise that NUS has an endless slew of publications for various student groups.

But as I sat submitting queerrelated articles to them, hoping to be heard, I couldn’t help but wonder, why wasn’t there a publication for the student community which probably needed this outlet of safety and self-expression the most? And thus The Rainbow Connection was conceived. Of course, this could not have been possible without my fellow EditorIn-Chief, Cab, who has had similar dreams of starting a queer student publication for the longest time, too, and for

whom I could not have been more thankful for coming on board this journey. Likewise, QueerNUS for their support and publicity, as well as Max for the graphic design. And, last but definitely not least, all the artists and writers who have allowed us to bring their works to light – without whom this inaugural issue of The Rainbow Connection would not exist.

Contributor or reader, at home in the queer community or simply just visiting, I hope you’ll find your pot of gold somewhere between these pages.

Michael Neo Founder Editor-In-Chief

contents Pride by Jes S. Even In Another Time by Michael Neo

Pr*de Month Baggage 2021 by Tako mention of religious justification of homophobia, internalised homophobia

That chinese new year by Jan

mention of mild homophobia & internalised biphobia

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falling into place by Mandy

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fleeting, fluttering by YQ mild body horror, insects

The Guesthouse by Ruixian Hierophant by Piyo

mention of religious justifications of homophobia, thematic depiction of conversion therapy

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asexual sketches by bunnified

horror imagery, non-graphic mentions of sex

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Come Home, Dear Child by Jes S. Contributor Bio

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pride

by Jes S. You ask why we are proud?

Because to be happy and to be proud of who we are in a world that wants to see us down, beaten and broken, is an act of defiance.

Because for so long, we were lost — drowning cold and afraid and alone until we were finally found — carried safely to shore by the truest family we’ve ever known, guided home by the brightest lighthouse, the strongest anchor.

Because this is the identity that so many of us — too many of us — have grown up hating ourselves for until we finally learned how to love it, shedding years upon years of pain and fear and shame to find it waiting for us beneath — an unbreakable peace like all our fractured pieces at last

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becoming whole again.

Because despite all the violence, and the hatred, and the world trying so hard to kill us, we’ve fought even harder to survive, and we did.

This is who we are, the sum of our blood and souls, borne by the indomitable spirits of those who came before us, and we refuse to be ashamed any longer.

You ask why we are proud?

This is why.

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Even In Another Time

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Left To Right, Top Down Christina of Sweden Ludwig II of Bavaria Emperor Pu-Yi Charles II of Spain Monsieur Philippe D’Orléans Chevalier D’Eon Frederick the Great Louis XVI James VI and I. Of course, the exact queer identites of these figures may be lost to time, but they are what historians (and I) have pieced together from past scholarship and what they’ve left behind for us.

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Artist’s Note If religion is traumatic, and the trauma has an anniversary, then for me that would be Pride month. This comic is about wrestling with religious guilt after multiple past failures to conform to the holy heterosexual standard.

As much as I love my partner, I am oftentimes seized with terror that this commitment to our relationship is ‘corrupting’ him irrevocably.

These thoughts are the worst during Pride month, unfortunately.

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That Chinese New Year

by Jan tw: mentions of mild homophobia and internalised biphobia throughout

I’d always imagine how I would run into you again. Maybe at the CBD I’d pass by you smoking at those hideous green dustbins, and we’d lock eyes for a moment only to glance away, gone as quickly as the spark in the cigarette you inhale.

Maybe I’d visit the pier you always took me to when I was feeling down, only to see another in your arms ... but no, not like this. Not walking into the home of my boyfriend’s family reunion, to see you casually standing in the corner of their home.

Garish firecracker decorations greeted us, annoyingly relaying mechanical sounds of explosions, yet it had failed to drive away the spirits of my past from coming back.

The home is brightly lit and decorated; intricate red couplets by the doorway, orchids in ornate vases, cherry blossoms in full bloom... but you, you were the only thing that stood out to me.

I remember all those nights we stayed up talking, how you’d tell me you’d wanted to snub all your aunties and uncles’ “oh where’s your boyfriend?” with me on your arm. But now here I am, with another, oh the irony.

11 I had imagined the pride I would feel, to be introduced to your parents; to be able to follow traditions yet at the same time defy it. To be with someone so unafraid to show me off, as much as I wished I had the courage to do so. You would proudly defy your parents’ pride not just once by being born a daughter, but twice, by bringing home another.

And now here I am, standing where I had so longed for; yet in a different circumstance. One where I had the privilege of being unafraid of loving who I loved.

The way I held his hand in front of everyone was no different from the way I held yours when we were alone.

Every look, touch and banter that he and I shared could’ve been a mimicry of us, sans the smell of mothballs.

I was ashamed that when you saw me, you would just see another bi girl who had fallen into the stereotype of “falling for a man” and my queerness became invalidated. Was my bisexuality “just a phase” all along?

A moment of attention-seeking, an artistic streak, something just to differentiate myself from the crowd - different reasons to pinpoint this to. To feel a sense of superiority of having a sense of choice; a sense of control over who I could be attracted to. Yet it is the very same thing that I did not choose, that highlights my lack of agency over whom to love.

I remember when you grew your hair out, I questioned if I was the girl or the guy in the relationship. I had played right into the trap of trying to form a semblance of heteronormativity into our relationship. An innocuous thought that showed our seams.

Now I stand here, still playing the role of femininitywith my long hair, makeup and manicured nails. I relished the privilege I held, yet struggled with a sense of imposter syndrome; a constant battling need to prove my identity.

12 That Chinese New Year As queer and open-minded as I’d like to believe I am, it is too easy to fall into wanting to fit into stereotypes and labels.

To play roles so that we could find an area we belong to in the community, not wanting to be rejected once again as we have been by society. And by doing so, we create unintended exclusions and remain blinded to our own prejudices. A part of me is ashamed to be relieved that both of us were of the same ethnicity - that of the majority race, that we didn’t have to deal with the intersectionality of an interracial relationship, on top of being queer.

As we made our way past you, you were still skulking in that corner, hunched over your phone. I wondered if you were texting someone new, as fervently as we used to text.

Does she send you riddles about what she was having for lunch like I did? Or do you ask her for her playlist and try to psychoanalyse why each song was added? I hope she makes you laugh that carefree way you do, with your head tilted back and cheeks flushing like plum blossoms. Yet selfishly like a child hoarding her sweets, I hope she doesn’t; I want to be the one and only that could make you feel that way.

My last message to you is still left unopened. Seeing your name disappear from my frequently contacted hurts so badly. How could losing just those few letters in your specific configuration mean so much more than the countless ones that filled its void. But now seeing you appear before me, alive and well, I felt a sense of relief. Maybe closure.

You looked up and recognition flashed across your face.

I shook my head gently, hoping you would get my signal - my first communication to you since we last talked. It was once again denial.

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And as quickly as that flash of recognition was there, it was gone.

“So this is my cousin. Hey, so this is my girlfriend, meet- “ His voice faded as I felt myself under the spotlight of your piercing gaze.

You struck out your hand for me to shake - those very same hands that had once wiped tears off my face, taught me the guitar and knew the intricacies of my being. Those very same hands - now a stranger meeting mine like a nomad revisiting a place of his foregone youth.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

And with that, I once again felt the familiarity of the chasm that had come between us. I was the one who wanted to hide, and you were the one with skin of leather; no milky way could bridge the astronomical difference between us.

You had me thinking that the way I loved you - in secrecy and silence, was wrong and that I was ashamed of loving you.

You’re right, you deserved better.

But you’re also wrong, I was never ashamed.

I had always blamed myself for the failure of our relationship, I felt like a baton-runner that had been unable to meet you half-way. Over the years, I understood now that we were just two people who wanted different things. We were the clichéd right person, wrong time; you wanted someone to

14 That Chinese New Year support and celebrate a part of your identity that was integral to you for many years, I wanted someone to support and journey with me in exploring the beginning years of my queer identity under privacy.

After we ended, I decided to take time to figure things out.

I’m still coming to terms with my identity and sometimes the insecurities come back; but I believe that despite the pain of the aftermath, what I shared with you was necessary for me in my journey. You were an important chapter of my life, but not the main plot.

I willed myself not to look back, out of Eurydicean fear, as he and I made our way towards the kitchen to meet the rest of his family, with the sound of the firecrackers slowly fading away.

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asexual sketches

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tw, horror imagery, non-graphic mentions of sex

\o/!

I drew this series back in October 2020, when Halloween coincided with Asexual Awareness Week. It was the first ever asexual piece I created since I came to terms with my sexuality and it combines elements that I consider to be characteristic of myself i.e., horror, puns, and using the cheapest art materials possible. Since then, I have gained a keen interest in exploring asexuality in media and have continued to work on other pieces that raise awareness of asexuality.

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“I wonder what I’m supposed to be feeling when I meet you.”

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fleeting, fluttering

by YQ tw: mild body horror, insects

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The Guesthouse

by Rui Xian

21st of January. I inhaled the crisp winter air, faintly laced with the scent of strawberries. The sun was just rising over the strawberry fields, fingers of gold beginning to spread through the clouds. Too early for tourists, bumbling down in their small white cars from the city. It was just me, the fields, the sun, and of course the sweet, red, strawberries, ripe to bursting on their green stalks.

Hualien city, Taiwan. Today would mark a year. Exactly twelve months ago, my plane flew out from Singapore and landed screaming on the tarmac four hours later in Taichung International Airport. I had accommodation booked for a week, no return ticket, and no plans. My mother’s puffy, tear-streaked face haunted my thoughts, along with all the other usual stuff.

I chose Taiwan because I could blend in. I looked like them, after all. I could pass for Taiwanese if I didn’t open my mouth.

The food was good. The people were friendly. As long as I steered clear of the places where I’d holidayed with my family and my friends, I could forget I was myself. I could live here for as long as I liked, invent an English name for fun, make an honest living and molt into my new, long-awaited self.

That was the rough plan, at least. Over the weeks, the plan sagged and shed its old convictions. Small things at first. Did I really need an English name? No, I was good with my own.

When I introduced myself to other people with the names I had invented for myself as a child, names like Dani or Abigail or Teresa, I invariably failed to respond when they called for me.

Those names felt heavy and uncomfortable out in the world, like I was wearing someone else’s baggy clothes. Only my real name fit, the one my parents had given me. Hui Yin. It meant bright. They probably meant clever, smart, intelligent. But I preferred to think of it as the quicksilver gleam of the moon on

23 a clear night, glimpsed through the canopies of rain trees. Hui Yin. So after a brief foray into my other selves, I was Hui Yin again.

Every morning for three weeks, I went down to the same corner store for a breakfast of warm bean-curd juice and fried dough sticks. I went from pointing to confidently placing an order in Mandarin. Then I would take my usual seat in the corner of the store, the one facing the window. Just so I could watch people stream by and cross roads while I dunked dough sticks in bean-curd juice and licked my fingers clean of grease.

It was a comforting and familiar habit, one I had even in Singapore. But there was also something terribly lonely about it, seeing I learnt how to eat fried dough sticks this way from my family. Once that loneliness became too much to bear, I stopped going and bought bread and tea eggs from convenience stores instead.

Anyway, life in Taiwan was great in a depressing sort of way. I was alone. I was free. I had no obligations. Even the chattering voices bled out of my head, their shadows receding as though chased away by the bright Taiwanese sun. For all intents and purposes, I was healing. I called home once a month to tell them I was well. I kept up pleasant conversation with my friends and family. I even skyped my parents once when they insisted on seeing my face. Things were better than they’d been for years, and I said so. The guesthouse I was staying at on the mountains had a cute golden retriever and a small flock of geese, and strawberry fields. It was enough for anybody, and I said that, too.

Nobody asked when I was coming back. No one dared to.

It was a week after the first anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan that she arrived at the guesthouse. It was her first stop and she still smelled of home. At first, I felt a revulsion towards her, a deep and vehement hatred for someone who represented so much of what I had run away from. I hated her enthusiastic greetings and warm smiles for the elderly couple who owned the place. Keep your sunny Singaporean cosmopolitanism inside, I wanted to snap. This is a place for work and silence. I

24 The Guesthouse greeted her just as enthusiastically anyway. I showed her up to her room, which was right next to mine, and as she closed the door I saw, just for a moment, the smile slip from her face and fall to the floor like a sheet of paper.

Her name was Si Ying. It sounded like Sing. She said, just call me Ying, and then it sounded like victory.

Dinner on the first night was a quiet affair. Instead of having it in the kitchen, we had it on the back porch which was built on a small bluff. In the day, it overlooked a majestic view of the mountain valley and the river that ribboned its way through it like a piece of blue silk. But for now, everything was inky blackness. Except the sky, which was a gauze of stars.

I’ve never seen so many stars, she said. If Ying had said it any other way, I would have instantly hated her. Baobei the golden retriever sat beneath the table, her tail wagging occasionally and sweeping over my foot. As dinner progressed, the elderly couple conversed with her politely and I picked up on bits and pieces of her history. She was from Singapore, like me. She was twenty-three. She’d studied psychology in university before she left. The elderly couple didn’t ask why she left. She said she liked the weather here, it was much cooler compared to Singapore. I was hit with a sudden flashback of how hard it had been pouring the night before I left and how I’d been shivering beneath the blanket. They asked, how long did she plan to stay? She didn’t know. Just like Hui Yin. She looked at me in surprise, eyes widening as though she hadn’t expected it of me.

After dinner, we helped to clear the table. The husband and wife tottered into the kitchen and Baobei followed, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Ying didn’t speak as we did so. Eventually she did, though, breaking the silence with a question she didn’t get the chance to ask me at dinner. Which part of Singapore are you from? It was a funny sort of question.

Singapore was so small, how did it matter? She leaned into my laughter. She laughed with me. She said, it doesn’t really matter, but wouldn’t it be interesting if we lived close by and now found

25 ourselves here in the same guesthouse?

Sengkang, I said finally. I lived in Sengkang. It had been such a long time that the word sounded unwieldy on my tongue.

If she noticed I used the past tense, she didn’t show it. She just shrugged and said, I live in Bishan. Then she took the plates and walked past me into the kitchen, smelling like mint and strawberry shampoo.

The question caught in my throat. Why are you here? Isn’t that what everyone wants to know so badly about me? And why do I want to know it so badly about you?

The next morning, I took her to see the geese. Today I was supposed to show her around the farms and the work shed, and tomorrow we would get to work in the fields. The geese were closest to the guesthouse. They squawked when they saw us coming, flapping their big white wings.

They peck at your backside when you’re not looking, I said, and she laughed. We threw the feed in silence, otherwise.

After the geese, we went to the strawberry fields. I explained that it was our job to prune the plants, make sure they were fruiting, and keep the place clean and ready for tourists.

That meant picking up whatever litter people left behind, like cigarette buds and even the odd condom. Strawberry fields really weren’t as idyllic as they seemed. But for today, we were just looking. I showed her how we numbered the rows, the toolshed, the pruning methods. Ying listened attentively. I tried to look behind her face for what I had seen when the sheet of paper had dropped, but found only clinical interest. And a flash of puzzlement, when she caught my searching gaze.

Ying never spoke tentatively. She always seemed sure, confident, and friendly. There was something a little distant about her that she couldn’t hide, however. Or perhaps she didn’t want to. Perhaps she didn’t know. She walked barefoot around the house although the floor was cold. She sat at her desk in the evenings with headphones and papers spread out before her. Sometimes she painted with a small watercolor set, but she

26 The Guesthouse never displayed her paintings, only locked them in drawers.

There was something about the mountains that wore a person’s jagged edges down, though. It wasn’t something you’d notice unless you were with someone else. It wasn’t just about breathing in sunlit air every morning and feeling it go crisp and cold down your lungs or spending all day in the fields soaking in green and blue through your eyes. It was also about her being there to see the pleasure I so shyly tried to hide, and how after a while, I stopped hiding it.

Three weeks into her arrival, I shoved her playfully and she fell into a clump of bushes.

There was a lot of confusion at first. I didn’t mean to push you so hard. Did something scare me? Did I see a centipede or something? We walked barefoot in the fields sometimes, so that was a concern. No, I didn’t see anything. I was just playing.

Just playing. The words sounded foreign, it seemed, to both of us. I saw her tense, then relax, just a little. In the habit she had of asking unexpected questions, she asked me if I had a nickname.

Is Hui Yin not short enough for you?

It’s just that Chinese names can be hard to remember.

You have a Chinese name. And I’m the only one around here.

I want you to have a nickname, she insisted. Hui sounds too harsh. Yin sounds like me.

Hui Yin is perfect.

No. I want you to have a nickname.

I felt slightly bemused by this. I’d never had a nickname forced on me before. I let her mull it over and knelt to prune strawberries, and when I looked up, she was staring at me thoughtfully.

You’re red, she said.

27 It’s cold, I countered, and self-consciously touched my cheek. Her eyes brightened.

Cheeky, she said. Your nickname is Cheeky.

I complained. I complained a lot. But Ying’s mind had settled on it like a butterfly descending on a stalk of grass.

The wind blew, but it hung on. So I became Cheeky. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t even like me. But she called me Cheeky anyway, and after a while, when she called, I answered. The old couple watched us with an amused light in their eyes. They said nothing.

Ying never asked me why I was there. I extended her the same courtesy. We never made any mention of the fact, other than the first day, that we were both from Singapore. That we had come from somewhere, and might be going somewhere. This was our bubble, our mountain oasis. We worked all day and drank tea at night. I showed her photographs of my travels before I had come here. We sat and swung our legs on the veranda. She caught a cold and stayed inside, then showed me a painting she did of me while I was working in the strawberry fields. You were spying on me from the windows, I accused her. And I don’t have such red cheeks. She just laughed. Yes, I was.

Yes, you do.

One night my parents called while she was braiding my hair. The last time someone had braided or even combed my hair, I had been in primary school. She didn’t make any move to leave, so I answered the Skype call reluctantly. My parents’ eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. Ying just waved.

I’m fine, yes, everything is the same. I wanted to get it over and done with. I wanted to end the call.

Who’s that!

28 The Guesthouse Just a friend. I could feel Ying trying to hold in her laughter.

I wanted to laugh with her, but I also didn’t know why she was laughing.

What’s her name? My mother was the most excited I’d seen her since I left. Hui Yin, you didn’t tell us you made a friend.

I’m not twelve, I snapped, and slammed the laptop shut.

Immediately, guilt stabbed through me.

Ying’s hands stilled on my back. It seemed to occur to her for the first time that I was uncomfortable. For a moment, she seemed to struggle for something to say. It was a rare occurrence for her, but finally she just said, I’m sorry. Should I have left?

No, stay.

Were those your parents? The most personal question she’d ever asked me.

Yeah.

Oh. Silence. I hated how thick and gummy it was, congealing around us and making me aware of her knee pressing into my hip and the light touch of her fingers and how she had to be aware I wasn’t wearing a bra. But the other part of me was consumed with guilt for slamming the virtual door on my mother like that. She’d done nothing but call at the wrong time.

The wrong time? The guilt continued eating at me, but yet another part of my mind seized upon this whisper of a phrase and began to turn it about this way and that. Why had it been the wrong time? What had been wrong about it: that my parents had interrupted (interrupted what?) or the strange fear that fluttered in my chest even now? Ying seemed to pause behind me, as though she could read my thoughts. I tried to change the subject.

What kind of braid is it? I asked desperately.

Fishtail, she said in a quiet voice. I turned. She sat there,

29 looking at me, a small question in her eyes.

Is it stupid, I said stupidly. Two twenty-something girls sitting in bed and braiding hair.

Yeah, pretty stupid, she said.

Well, then. Better get to bed, I said. She leaned forward and kissed me.

I kissed her back. I’d been wanting to for so long. I don’t even know where the desire came from. It might have been the second day, feeding the geese with her. It might have been the first day when the smile fell from her face like a sheet of paper. It might have been when she painted me, or first called me Cheeky, or just moments ago, when her fingers slid slightly across the bare skin of my shoulders as she gathered my hair in her hands.

She moved with that odd mixture of confidence and distance. Like she was holding herself to me and away from me at the same time. Like she knew what she was doing. Like she didn’t. In contrast, I was bumbling through it in quite a straightforward way. I’d never kissed anyone before. Her mouth felt the way I imagined a mouth would feel. I did what I saw people do in the movies. It seemed to work. I bit at her lip. She laughed against my mouth. In a way it was friendly, not just romantic, like the natural next step after hugging.

She slept in my room that night. The air was chilly and we snuggled next to each other, talking until we fell asleep. We woke up tangled in the sheets, tangled in each other, sunlight from the window falling over our feet. If the old couple noticed a change, they didn’t comment on it.

In fact, our rhythm of life hardly changed. That was what I appreciated about Ying. She could do something monumental like give me a name and then make me forget it in the middle of a kiss. She also took too long in the shower and had calloused knees. Eczema, she said. It got better there.

My parents asked me only once about her. I made it clear that she was mine, the way a tiger might piss on the edges of its territory to warn other animals to stay away. Her name is Ying, I

30 The Guesthouse said, powerfully and dismissively. It doesn’t matter, I was telling them. Move on. They did. My parents trod on eggshells around me, sometimes. It was regrettable but also terribly convenient.

Life went on. I stayed another year. Another winter, another spring, another summer. In autumn, the mountain seemed to catch on fire, deep emerald becoming gold and red and yellow, and falling away. And always, the river.

Through it all, she was there. I had a sense that she was meant to move on, but she stayed. She lingered. One time, we fought. Something I’d said without quite meaning to that had rubbed her the wrong way. Her anger danced beneath the surface at first, and it took one more careless word to bring it rushing to the surface. I think she almost left, then. It wasn’t anything petty, but after knowing her for so long, I’d begun to feel the edges of an immense fatigue within her. It was vast and cavernous, like a black hole. It made up more of her than I’d realized. I wondered if I’d wake up in the morning and she’d be gone. I would have no way of finding her. Si Ying might not even be her real name. I wouldn’t have put it past her to lie about everything, about who she was, to everyone.

But in the end, it was I who left first.

She’d known me as Cheeky. I reminded her of my real name, and gave her my last name, too. That meant find me. I wondered if she got the message. I leaned down and kissed her and she kissed me back and gripped my arms. We stayed awake for as long as we could. Her tears wet my neck and mine wet her hair. It wasn’t profuse, though. It was hard to cry when you’ve been happy for so long.

Ying, I said.

Yeah? Barely above a whisper.

Nothing. I just wanted to say your name. Ying. Ying, Ying, Ying.

She laughed and sniffled and kissed me on the neck and left

31 a mark I didn’t bother hiding when I got into the taxi the next morning.

We didn’t exchange numbers. No emails, no addresses.

She didn’t give me her last name. It seemed unspoken, between us, that she would be the one to find me again. If she wanted to. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would have no warning when she did, the same way I had no warning when I was christened in the strawberry fields.

It seems foolish to remember two years in a foreign country by just one person. As though any person, lover or not, were big enough to swallow up busy city mornings and beancurd juice and fried dough sticks for three weeks in a row, and conversations with an old couple when it was just the three of us, and cups of tea and a book in bed by myself. But people are.

Ying was. I checked my socials for the first time since leaving Singapore when I was in Taichung Airport, waiting at the gate.

Looking for her message, which hadn’t yet arrived. Which might never arrive.

In some ways, it was like waking from a dream. But in so many others, it felt like the dream went on and on, cycling from the heat of a fever dream to the cool bliss of memory. I could no longer tell dream and reality apart; was not sure I wanted to.

But one thing was clear.

Everything beautiful, before or since, is chiefly beautiful because of her.

32 tw: religious justifications of homophobia, thematic depiction of conversion therapy

“Rip my jaw open And turn my skin inside out.

When I’m born again, Will the rainbow wash Then I went under My lungs And

out? full of water my head with

thoughts of her.”

V. THE HIEROPHANT

by Piyo

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by Jes S. it will not feel like this forever. one day, it will not feel like drowning. one day, that beautiful word will terrify you no more. one day, you will no longer be afraid of your own skin. one day, you will not have to bite your tongue to swallow your still-beating heart down your throat. one day, you will find your kin — i promise you will. we always, always find each other — however lost we are, however dim the sky — drawn to one another by the warmest gravity, bound together by a tether stronger than blood; and their embraces will be like finally feeling sunbeams on your cheeks again, after so long spent shivering in the shadows. one day, your heart will blossom again, and this time, there will be no shame, no darkness, only you

34 artists Tako (he/him) draws sometimes. This comic is like free therapy; the more he explores this divide between religion and queerness, the more he can put his not good, very bad self-talk behind. Thanks for reading! You can find him at @takokunn on Instagram.

YQ (she/her) is currently studying Arts and Humanities, and enjoys drawing and learning. bunnified (she/her) is an amateur asexual artist based in Singapore. she is a firm believer that you don’t need expensive products to make good art, which is why her main medium is black pen on $2 sketchbook paper. Through traditional illustration, mixed media, and pixel art, she explores facets of her inner self, gives the occasional social commentary, and more often than not, makes subpar fanart and memes. You can follow her work on Instagram @_bunnified_ Mandy (she/her) loves (drawing) girls and things she feels in her free time!

Michael (they/them) is a self-proclaimed “manic pixie dream comrade”, because they are obsessed with History. Other “impractical” things they are into include musical theatre, bright hair dye, holding onto their Tumblr long after the death of the website, and blue lipstick. Which should explain the rest of the term.

Said Tumblr is off-limits but you can find their art @mad_ hatter_micycle on Instagram! poets jes s. (she/they) is a final year sociology major who can be found having a writer’s block 99% of the time and writing the remaining 1% of the time.

Piyo (she/her) is a bi disaster bye.

35 writers Rui Xian (she/her) is a lot of things in the shape of a person, trying to muster up the courage to eat alone.

Jan (she/her) just came out to herself this year as bi. As a nature geek, she can often be found wandering around outdoors with her camera. Her bucket list priority is to recreate the tunnel scene from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Cab (they/them) is a taxi. etc Max (they/he) is a lit & philo major with delusions of employability. He dreams of running away to live in a museum.

The Rainbow Connection @queernus therainbowconnection.zine@gmail.com