Nine months in a sepia-tone pool of cosmic spices
of peace or absence or nascence.
Nine months, then everything exfoliates into light.
Nine months and the things that disappear remain,
nine months and hands are not for walking—
you learn to put less pressure on the earth’s skin:
your tongue utters a thing of unknown
and your being breaks from mine;
you make a pastiche of the world
and I am no longer the world to you
—your laugh acknowledges this.
Every time you reach one horizon
you fall into another.
It is not so much rebirth
as it is a drowning.
(c) David Wong Hsien Ming 2014