Poem - Missing person Notice

In old photos, but not in the mirror

A sense of loss

A loss of taste 

Makes it harder to find you

Sweet, sour, spicy, and salty

How I wish I could find you

Maybe you are not truly missing

I’m the one who misses you

If I could stop longing for you

Maybe I could find you back once more

Moving beyond the feeling of absence

Moving beyond the flavors

After all, life without you continues

with different taste of experiences

Sweet memories knock soft at my door

Sour relationships teaches me to let go

Spicy hopes blaze as they did once more

Salty tears cleanse what pain etched before

In a new plate

Beneath a clear sky

You may not come back the same

But I will rediscover myself 

Not toward what was lost

but through what was found

Afterword:

This poem began with a hunger deeper than my stomach could feel.

During my first six months in Malaysia and Singapore — nourished only by a PEG tube — I thought I had forgotten how to crave for food. But when I returned to Chiang Mai, something stirred. The scent of green curry, the sweetness of banana pancake, the umami punch of the Thai oyster sauce on the Fried morning glory — it wasn’t just my body remembering. It was me realizing: I hadn’t lost my appetite. I just wasn't face with the right kind of cuisine. 

Like soya sauce and sugar balancing a Phad Thai, this poem mixes what hurts with what will heal. These words are my pad see ew noodles — twisted with longing, entangling, stir-fried in memory, served hot with the truth: sometimes I don’t miss the food. I miss who I was while savouring the Thai food.

In the end, I'll uncover a new version of myself—someone no longer bound by the need to taste, but free to savor life in other ways.

— For every silenced craving that still whispers.