then you did the unthinkable. ran from the burning pyre, shed off your old self like a snake. vowed to want to live again, and never flirt with hell. wiggled yourself into spaces small enough to swallow you. your back then folded, bowed, but still a bone. executed mental somersaults, threw yourself like bird after bird against the escape window. carved out three selves. jumped into the ecstasy of a name yet unlived in, splitting your life clean into two halves, a crumb-less baguette. & stay close to the floor, & close to the wall. thin as tenjugo paper, empty as the world, rimmed as a cup. being nobody is easy. preface all your purchases with how little they actually cost. nobody knows everything. you thrifted this. nobody’s perfect and yesterday, you were no longer. feel compelled. do penance for everything you once had & apologise, & apologise, & rage at even what little is left will be taken away. you want to say: look at me now. you want to shake life by the shoulders. you want to say So Many Things. still your old body self. still your tendoned prayers. may you reflect on the absoluteness of all suffering, perceived or otherwise. & decide not to be perceived at all. & remind yourself to be small. no claim to anything. your own self in this bad spacewave world? know your place. do not know your home. do not think about the food you left there, must be growing stale in the fridge, growing scales in the fridge, dredging the place of comings and goings, of longings and moldings. and now, what luck! let me tell you a story: it all began with the house fire,
Laura Jane Lee is a Hong Kong-born, Singapore-based poet. She is a winner of the Sir Roger Newdigate Prize and was shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Her work has been featured in The Straits Times, Tatler Asia, Poetry London, Ambit, QLRS, and the 52nd Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. Her most recent pamphlet flinch & air was published with Out-Spoken Press in 2021.
