Nafeeza Kayla Pualiyan, Indonesia's National Honour
September 2026
takes one to know one
At the wedding, he pocketed the place card
of a woman who asked him
to pass the salt.
He smoothed her name
against his thigh
before slipping it beside his keys,
as if a name could become familiar
from being carried.
A waitress called him love.
He touched his tongue to his teeth
as though the word had left
something there.
In my purse,
a petrol receipt from October:
drive safe
in blue ink,
the letters paling at the fold
from how often I had opened it.
The bridesmaid brushed his wrist
on her way to the wine.
By dessert,
she had a kitchen facing west,
two daughters,
and a house near enough to the sea
for salt to gather on the windows.
He had decided
she hated mornings
and slept with one foot
outside the sheets.
She did not know his name.
The cake arrived
white and many-tiered.
Everyone lifted a glass
toward the two people
whose names had been printed together
on menus,
on envelopes,
on everything meant to last.
Under the table,
his knee found mine.
Neither of us moved.
The sugar flowers
began to sweat.
Across from us,
the bride wiped icing
from her husband’s mouth
with her thumb.
He leaned into her hand
without thinking.
Beside me,
he looked at the bridesmaid.
I looked at the receipt
inside my purse
without taking it out.
Later,
while everyone searched beneath chairs
for coats and handbags,
her place card fell
from his pocket.
I bent to pick it up.
So did he.
For a moment,
our fingers met
over a woman
who had only asked him
for the salt.
Neither of us laughed.
Both our hands closed
around the wrong name.
Score: 99 out of 100.
A precise, quietly devastating wedding poem whose imagery of carried names and projected lives lands with real force, slightly diluted by a few explanatory lines.
Read the September 2026 National Honours