One.
i breathe deeply and
imagine myself flickering like
sunlight falling
through leaves: a trick
of light, and it is possible
i am here to tell you it is possible.
to become a blade of grass
and the wind that blows through it,
the damp soil
and the laughter
and the forever.
it is spring.
it is summer.
you can hear the breathing
the rustling, the soft murmuring
a language you know and don’t know
and your heart turns itself over
if you could
hold down this moment
your hands would always be
glowing.
but the wind picks it up
and carries it along.
to the next person
the next poem.
along, along, along.
–
Two.
i have never felt more free
than when the ocean carries
my body / less lonely
when the salt smooths my skin /
when i do not feel the weight
of my sorrows, my heart, my tired.
to not be flesh
but a curve in the wave
to stretch for miles
and kiss the horizon
with a full mouth
and feel the colours
lap over me.
i wash myself
with salt water
and, if it’s possible at all,
feel a new.
–
Three.
i began the day staring at a freckle that had newly formed on the tip of my nose. with my face close to the mirror, i try recalling what i looked like without it and i cannot remember. it’s as if this tiny, brown speck has been there all along and only now am i seeing it. perhaps after cycles of regeneration. some days i think of this body and am disheartened by it; by the burdens it brings from the outside, how i have to carry it through this life. the artist Don Nace once said, “I did not expect to be me for an entire lifetime”. i whisper it now: i did not expect to be me for an entire lifetime. other days i think of this body and i am so alive by it. how, most of the time, it carries me instead of me carrying it. through mountains, through water. how it absorbs warmth and sunlight and sounds. how it can memorise movements. how it remembers: love. i want to be moved. to sing and walk through valleys and deserts and remember it all.
–
ANTHEA YANG 