disembodied summer
girl straddles
kitchen sink with her elbows.
diaphanous shards of light spritze skin
daubing her in gold. setting her apart even further than she already is.
the taste of home in her mouth is
still too acrid, too insistent, too
obviously her own.
it does take time to lose yourself intentionally.
girl ghosts left hand over right,
peruses the grooves of her wrists like open books,
touches crushed lips to still-blossoming skin the colour of drying grass.
tells herself, voice trembling, that concealment is a process.
girl flinches away from herself. wonders if they will drown her in her own skin.
not such an evanescent thought.
in the background––
grandmother is draped in the static buzzing of cicadas in summer
she wears radio sound like a coat,
holds herself like still-drying clay.
grandmother swishes foreign syllables around her mouth
like oolong tea.
the product of experimentation sloshes over her slackened
lips every now and again––
tension hangs in thick braided ropes. time sways, heat-ridden.
girl arches her back slightly,
bares the grooves of her gold-rimmed throat to liminal space.
traces the edge of her collarbone, feather-light.
thinks of coagulating blood and heavy, oppressive heat.
vulnerability is distilled into flesh across two generations.
the quiet is pliable. girl wishes she could
meld it, swallow it. wishes she had the courage to pull
her grandmother's hands to hers.
the crickets' joyous chorale hangs,
contorted, suspended, in the shimmering patch of air
at the far end of the lawn
out of the reach of these fractured fingers.
girl feels detached from her body ––
hazy-eyed, caught deep in the throes of
june. her hands are
submerged, soaked in chlorine and remnants of
pool days in a nation not her own.
her tongue is waterlogged.
outside, the cicadas mourn.
By Chloe Prasetya
Biography:
Chloe Prasetya is a rising senior attending an international high school in Singapore. She is editor of a literary magazine at her school and writes poetry that draws on her Southeast Asian heritage, seeking to process emotions which are difficult to articulate and histories that go unacknowledged. Writing poetry has become an avenue for her to explore her heritage in all its grittiness and search for closure in the depths of memory.
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