acceptance.

By Tang Sumi

after “conceptual art” by arthur yap

left behind, we carve out the empty
spaces of ourselves, emotional
inertia filling in the afterimages
of other pictures. imprinted in us
are the presences we misheard
as promises. we define ourselves
around the nothingness of staying,
the imprecise science of disappearing.

this is what we are: impressions of here
and gone again, faded ink shaking
dust off aching air. this is what we are:
almost enough, almost our own.

---

Tang Sumi is a Year 5 Film student at the School of the Arts and was previously a Literary Arts student. Her poetry has been published in ZUBIR: A SOTA Literary Arts Anthology, although she often prefers to pretend her writing prior to 2018 doesn’t exist. The greatest discovery of her life was learning how to arrange words in a way that lets you sink into an atmosphere of quiet yearning, a single suspended moment in everyday life. She firmly believes that the pinnacle of reactions to your writing are incoherent keysmashes and the sobbing emoji.

Image: @markusspiske via Unsplash