When This is All Over
I want to touch everything. Nick every lick of lint from the suede of my boots. Twist every doorknob in sight, just to hear them click. The windows no longer walls. I want to pluck the Ixora off my neighbour’s shrub and suck the nectar clean, wear its corpse in my hair. Utter joy. Feel themetallic burn of the railings. Slap every triangle handrail in the train, my fingers grazing the spaces where stranger hands have filled. To hold every orange in the produce section. Poke every bruise on every peach on every shelf. Wipe my hands on each page of my favourite book in the library until they are sticky with words. Viscous and dripping. Dip my finger into the raw mucky earth like testing the temperature of water until my nails are caked brown. Climb a tree. Sit on the crook of an Angsana. Twist a branch from its ribs. Crush the embers of sand between my toes, push my hands against the surface of the slippery sea. Cradle a face. Touch my face. Touch yours. Feel your nose against my nose. Your cheek my cheek. Not another screen in my palm. Not another pixel to hold.
Kristie Ng is learning to be a writer. She once told Simon Armitage a joke which he laughed at, politely. Her poems have been published on Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Asingbol.
The Kindling 