By Tang Sumi
after “on walking” by aisha r.
left in the moon-soaked night, the city turns to
ink. a change but not a reversal. a spectre made solid.
silhouettes seep in through glass but not, i think, as
dark as your eyes, or the way i get caught on the sweep
of your collarbone. my storefront-sign heart stutters,
lingers, leaves an echo of held hands in murky water.
you speak in a effusive colour, like smoke curling through
my fingers, and my neon-muted heart stumbles down
the road between loving and leaving. i run. call us colour.
call us good. call us the rippling puddle laid to rest.
for all the good this does not do us, i swallow up my helpless
heart and call out. words spill from my hands and never
reach you, somewhere i can’t follow, somewhere my
toes edge over the borders. i stumble in or wander within,
lost in the fumbling surety of being together.
in the watercolour-drenched night the streetlamps
mourn but we do not, silence a comfort, miles stretching out
in front of us.
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: @jontyson via Unsplash
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