Sumitra Singam
The Lulu Lemon women talk of Romeo and Juliet between sets of bicep curls because Lovefool comes on over the speakers and they remember studying the movie in school and I think I was in university when it came out which means I am older than them, these women with their muscles knit neatly to their bones with sturdy tendons, their long, blonde hair swept back in ponytails, their bodies strong, present, solid. I feel ten, and thirty, and three hundred, anything but the forty-nine I actually am and like I don’t know anything at all, how to fire ATP to make a muscle curl to lift a dumbbell, my palm curling around the feel of its tacky plastic, my swollen feet in my orthopaedic shoes, my hair unbrushed from a sleepless night, my traitorous brain losing words for the-weights-machine-that-makes-your-legs-hurt and these women don’t gasp for breath between sets or take sips of water, they just power through, the lines of their muscles long and sinuous and I must do this so my bones are not cobwebs and keep holding me up but it will all ache so much later in front of the TV with the chocolate and the wine and I don’t know how it has all come to this, but what I do know is every single lyric to this song, and the feeling of being twenty when Claire Danes looked at Leo through an aquarium and the light in her eyes refracted my whole soul and it was all there waiting for me exquisite aching love and how all of it has brought me to this breathless moment at the gym and these women for all their vigour didn’t have that.
Sumitra Singam is a queer, neurodiverse Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for BSF 2025. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits at sumitrasingam.squarespace.com
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