Author's Notes
Two moments
This poem grew out of two moments, two years apart.
The first: my children in tears after a football match. A heavy loss. Someone crouched to their height and offered tissue paper, already smiling. The smile meant what it looked like it meant. There was no ambiguity. That's part i.
The second: footage of a lone Japan supporter, seated in a sea of Brazil's gold and green after a World Cup knockout, crying while strangers around him — mid-celebration — reached over to wipe his face. Still smiling. In a way he couldn't quite read as comfort, or as something else entirely. That's part ii. I was in that stand. I was the blue shirt.
The same gesture
What stayed with me was the tissue paper appearing in both moments. The same object, offered by a hand, with a smile. In the first moment it's unambiguous — a parent, a child, a trusted face. In the second it crosses a border: language, allegiance, the direction the afternoon is going. The smile is the same. The meaning isn't.
I kept thinking about what it costs to offer something across a moment you can't share. And what it costs to receive it.
The pivot lines
A joy that size can sound like grief. A grief that size can sound like joy. These two lines are the centre of the poem. Everything before them is setup; everything after is consequence. I didn't plan them — they arrived together, and once they were there the rest of the poem arranged itself around them.
The stranger's smile
The stranger kept smiling. That's not a criticism. They were offering something real — kindness, or joy, or both at once, which is its own kind of gift. But a smile that can't tell what it's looking at is also, quietly, a kind of erasure. It assumes the face can be returned to legibility. That grief is a smudge.
I did not ask them to stop. I didn't know yet if I wanted them to. That's where the poem ends, and where I still am.
Singapore · 2026