So it came to be that we stepped off the plane that April and landed in the churlish heat of home. There are no seasons in Singapore; it is only ever summer, which makes the designation itself irrelevant, with no change to compare it to. I was tired, but Eley leaned up against me in the way she knew I liked and I perked up a little.

We had come back to be married in the eyes of my family. Eley had insisted. How can we be husband and wife if they don’t even know I exist? she’d said. A fair point, but they did know. They’d just never met her. All they knew was that she wasn’t Chinese, and I’d met her in the UK, and their curiosity stopped there.

Do they know about the skin? she asked as we moved through immigration. The security makcik nearby was shooting us curious looks; Eley had long hair, very long, falling in dark waves past her buttocks. Of course not, I said, not without exasperation. Eley, how could I tell them about the skin?

Her eyes were on me then. What do you mean how, she said. It’s who I am, Jun. How could we keep it from them.

Just wait until you’re five minutes into this country, I said. Wait and see how little people are willing to believe.

#

She could be prickly when she wanted to be, but generally, if unvexed, my wife was sweet and capable of astonishing tenderness. This wasn’t a quality I was necessarily familiar with in either myself or others, and it took a while for me to adjust to the contours of my new reality; for months I was constantly on the edge of being overwhelmed. I would retreat, seeking comfort in trifles and distractions, telling myself it didn’t matter if this pushed her away. But I returned, and she was there. Not waiting but open to me. It took me a while to realise that this was because she, too, was always on the cusp of leaving.

Now I watched her comb her wet hair. She’d hung the skin up on the hook beside the bathroom door. I wanted to look away from it, but she was standing there and I wanted to look at her, so had no choice: I tried my best to focus only on what I wanted to see, the pink curve of her neck where it met her shoulder and the flecks of water dappling her thighs. Her hair like black kelp down her back.

Come here, I said, and she came. We were staying in my parents’ flat and had to be quiet, but she rippled over me with her quick, surprising strength, and I thought it was hardly possible that there was anything better than this, even back here, in a home I wanted to leave.

Sometimes we’d lay in bed and her strangeness would wash over me. She clung to me now and then, like a pet nosing for affection; other times I looked at her doing the laundry or reading a book, utterly contained within herself, and I knew without a doubt that she could leave me and never look back. There existed within her a certainty that she could survive anything. This drew me to her. It also made her a flight risk.

Once, driven to consuming nervousness by this self-possessed freedom, I talked to a therapist. There was an online form for this, and I felt a little ridiculous referring myself — there was no section on the form that asked you for details, only a series of drop-down demographic questions and finally a box for ‘any other relevant information’ (500 characters maximum). I put down ‘I’m afraid my partner will leave me, though we love each other and have no major problems. I’m very anxious that I will self-sabotage. Above all I want to be with her ethically.’

A few weeks later I had a video call assessment with an NHS-assigned mental health professional. She looked at something on her screen — my form, I assume — then blinked at me with clinical interest.

What do you mean when you say you want to be with your partner ethically? she asked. Her voice, though tinny through the speakers, had the crisp gravelly cadence of a posh ex-smoker.

Well — I said, hesitating. I don’t want to force her to stay with me. I want her to belong to me of her own free will.

When you say ‘belong’ —

That was the wrong word. I mean I want her to be with me of her own free will.

The therapist raised her eyebrows. Is there anything that would make you think this isn’t the case? she asked.

Well, no, I said, probably too quickly. It felt as if I was digging a hole for myself; all I wanted was actionable advice on how to love a woman whose departure was inevitable.

Why do you think you feel so anxious that she will leave? asked the therapist. Have her actions indicated as such?

I thought of the way Eley stepped out of her skin on the riverbank and walked into our house, dripping. A wild creature domesticating herself, ostensibly out of love for me.

Well no, I said again.

So perhaps this has more to do with how you see yourself than the reality of the situation.

What was I supposed to say to this? I shrugged, then nodded. Perhaps, I said.

I want to be careful with how I say this, she said, but some research indicates that men of East Asian descent have trouble with self-image in sexual relationships.

I looked at her.

Can you feel these feelings you have without attaching them to the future? she asked.

This might have been a helpful question for her other patients but my wife wasn’t even human. We were, fundamentally, an accident — if I didn’t do something drastic, one day she was going to leave me. That was just a fact.

Yes, I said.

Feelings aren’t facts, said the therapist.

Yes, I replied.

Up close the skin had a sheen to it, undulating and nacreous. It smelled faintly like iodine. No matter the weather there was a damp slickness to it; it never stopped shining, succulent and mucosal, even hung outside in summer on the hook I’d made from a bent nail. Its contours haunted the edge of my consciousness, and its weight, when I took it in my hands, was surprisingly vast. Sometimes I held it to my face and kissed it. Sometimes I spoke to it, telling it things I could never tell Eley.

On the second evening of our return we had dinner with my family at home. My mother had prepared five dishes: fried pomfret, sambal long beans, tomato egg, braised chicken, and ABC soup. She’d even served the rice in individual bowls, the cooker nowhere to be seen. The guest chopsticks were laid out neatly beside each bowl, gleaming atop the clear plastic tabletop protector.

Wah, I said, appropriately touched. Thanks ah, ma.

Small thing only, she muttered, dismissing me. I could tell she was pleased from the way she clamped her lips together and rearranged her soup spoon.

My brother was absent due to reservist duties, for which my parents offered vague apologies. The dining table was pushed up against the wall to save space, as was typical in flats belonging to the older generations; as such Eley and I faced it like miscreants under punishment while my parents sat on either side of us.

Did Guo Jun tell you about his experience in the army? my father asked Eley with his mouth half full of pomfret.

She nodded, glancing at me. I found it very interesting, she said, though a little sad.

Sad? my father asked. What sad?

Eley opened her mouth to answer, not realising that this time he wasn’t asking a question — he was informing her that it was not, in fact, sad, that there wasn’t anything to be sad about. And sure enough he spoke over her: You know he was an officer?

I do, Eley replied, glancing at me again. This whole time my father hadn’t looked at me once. He continued to speak.

He almost signed on, he informed the table, accepting a piece of chicken my mother extended to him with her chopsticks. I told him, of course, no brainer, do it. Actually in school they already offered him the scholarship — but he turned it down. Before his pass out parade they asked him again. And you know what he said?

Aiya, my mother interjected, embarrassed and fretful. So long already, no need to say lah. And he’s doing well over there — now she looked at me with faint accusation — right or not, Jun?

We recently bought a house, I said. I paused; my mother nodded, or something like it. A cottage by the river, I added.

My father straightened his chopsticks by tapping them on the table and turned his attention to the long beans. For a few minutes my parents busied themselves with the task of eating, and after a while my father rose from the table and switched on the TV.

Eley blinked at them, their resigned faces close to expiry. It was inconceivable to her that my offering had been met with no response; what she didn’t understand was that with my parents, silence wasn’t silence. Neither was it laden with meaning. They’d found a way to strip it of all interiority, to make something formless utterly and impenetrably solid. When I was younger I used to wonder at which point each of them had perfected the art of turning away. Had they married in this muteness, or had it grown from their marriage like an accidental unwanted child? A thing kept alive out of habit or obligation?

Eley was looking at them, then she was looking at me. I had trouble breathing. I avoided her eyes, knowing what she was seeing, knowing she saw how I was hindered, and why.

My mother placed a piece of fish on my rice. Give to your wife, she said. I picked it up with my chopsticks and dutifully passed it along.

Thank you, said Eley, and in those two words I heard the pre-departure sirens.

#

I’d never meant to believe in them: the manifold and unspoken possibilities of devotion. Growing up here, in this heat, in this house, meant that the shape of my wanting had been almost entirely practical, there being no room or time for anything else. I’d had girlfriends — sensible beginnings and amicable endings — all of them sharing my inhibition on a profound, inevitable level, each of us secure in the neatness of our limited desire.

With that inhibition came a craving for structure. For something external to us that promised, if not life, at least forward movement; something that would propel us into each new stage of being despite our fundamental inertia. A future we could, if not relish, at least rely upon.

But now I had Eley and nothing was enough. And nothing could be relied upon.

Lisabelle Tay is a Singaporean writer and poet. Her poetry appears in Anthropocene, Bad Lilies, and elsewhere, including New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy, 2022); her debut pamphlet was Pilgrim (The Emma Press, 2021). Her fiction appears in Sine Theta Magazine and elsewhere, including NO FLASH (National Gallery Singapore, 2024). She was part of the 2023 Black List Feature Lab with her screenplay MOMO, which is currently in development.

From June to December 2024 National Centre for Writing was delighted to host four writers in virtual residence: Joyce Chua, Marylyn Tan, Lisabelle Tay and Jerrold Yam, with support from the National Arts Council of Singapore.