When news broke out that the glorious White Building
was to become dust to make way for a high rise
that would displace both bones and ghosts,
we were standing in a parking lot, my friends’ fists
clutched tight around their motorcycle handles,
their rapid Khmer lilting with each syllable
as they quickly planned a memorial service
for another shard of history that once did not have
blood dripping from where it had been broken.
My nickname was Country Girl, clueless and silly,
full of questions, songs and dances, a patched-up mess
with the face of a Vietnamese, the laugh of a Filipino,
and the pride of a maybe, sometimes, almost Khmer.
We left just as the city was starting to wake again.
In journalism school, they never taught us
how to grieve for ourselves, so we tried
in the best way we knew how -- a funeral procession
of worn rubber shoes and checkered polos,
in our backpacks the cameras that would write our eulogies for us.
I was the stranger whose connection to the deceased no one
understood, but still let in,
taught me a prayer,
offered some porridge.
That afternoon, I whispered a prayer.
White Building, who stares death in the face,
once a mother to the hands that had colored
their age gold, please welcome me.
Do not let your skeleton
collapse beneath the weight of this stranger.
Please, welcome me.
Aug 27, 2021
Aug 27, 2021 at 2:10 AM UTC
When news broke out that the glorious White Building
was to become dust to make way for a high rise
that would displace both bones and ghosts,
we were standing in a parking lot, my friends’ fists
clutched tight around their motorcycle handles,
their rapid Khmer lilting with each syllable
as they quickly planned a memorial service
for another shard of history that once did not have
blood dripping from where it had been broken.
My nickname was Country Girl, clueless and silly,
full of questions, songs and dances, a patched-up mess
with the face of a Vietnamese, the laugh of a Filipino,
and the pride of a maybe, sometimes, almost Khmer.
We left just as the city was starting to wake again.
In journalism school, they never taught us
how to grieve for ourselves, so we tried
in the best way we knew how -- a funeral procession
of worn rubber shoes and checkered polos,
in our backpacks the cameras that would write our eulogies for us.
I was the stranger whose connection to the deceased no one
understood, but still let in,
taught me a prayer,
offered some porridge.
That afternoon, I whispered a prayer.
White Building, who stares death in the face,
once a mother to the hands that had colored
their age gold, please welcome me.
Do not let your skeleton
collapse beneath the weight of this stranger.
Please, welcome me.
It was sometime around June 2017 when my classmates and I found out that the historic White Building in Phnom Penh was going to be torn down to make way for a 21-storey high rise. My friends quickly organised a photowalk, and we made our way to the remains of what used to be home to many Khmer artists in the sixties. We spent the entire afternoon exploring the building— capturing corners, faces and stories our feet would never be able to return to again.
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