She mutes the wave upon her palm.
Tentative, she hangs one arm out
into the willing air. He watches
with the way he stands, well-wishing her
to understand: will love,
will love now finally show him
a way ― muscular ― exerted in her wrist,
extending frankly tip by fingertip,
till it signals (wing to wing, at last)
joint flight, blood-hope, first trust?
Photograph: 香港屯門口角天后廟 Hau Kok Tin Hau Temple, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
Ocean and Notion
Had little in common;
A freak of English
Enforced their union.
They took their honeymoon
Down by the sea
And talked all day
Of philosophy.
Notion went swimming —
A lover of quirks —
While Ocean kept watch
In case of sharks.
Sunburnt but happy
They drove back to town
To start new lives
As Proper Nouns.
Photograph: 香港大埔文武廟 Man Mo Temple, Tai Po, Hong Kong (Evette Kwok, 2020)
I hear it in the choices
of the words they make: their voices
meet, but only the voices meet ―
an appearance of conversation, where no soulmateship
is intended in the slightest, produces plastic flowers
of itself, approximate to the real thing, but souring
subtly in the lack of sweet scent-smell.
Hell ―
hole-hearted ― starts to feel like this,
a kiss no deeper than the four lips of the kiss,
an imitation of intimacy that, technically,
is just about all friendshipwreck. Just because
you can count all your feathers
doesn’t mean you can fly . . .
They call it a dream
because you can’t hold on
to any of it, and although
you are “there”, widely awake,
how much can you make it
your own? Very little.
Life escapes you, at once,
in every instant, unless,
somehow,
you allow it to touch you in all your force —
like love.
