to let firewood catch fire in my lungs / the heat like that of crematoriums / while I choose to call it warmth // to worship bath sponges / quietly salvaging myself // to loosen the knots on my shoelaces / like how my mother would have // to pretend I have a mother / so I can believe my tendons are part of something grander / but not something grandiose // to thrust words rooted at the back of my head / into storage rooms / into garages / into archaeologists’ workrooms / like artefacts of a tragicomedy // to accept the motions of breathing ash / so wrongfully weightless it feels like air // to butcher all of my walls / using a scalpel meant for cadavers / as I treat the aftermath like a musical // to look back / without giving the grief a permanent name / and instead compare it to fish bones lodged in my throat / so I don’t have to confront misplaced love // to obey the process / in the way corpses obey stillness // to leave the years and distances where they belong / as a fog between me and my friends / the cities like cracks in an aortic valve / resembling countdowns
J.Y. Tan (she/her) is a student from Singapore. Her work appears in Salamander, Lunch Ticket and Rust + Moth among other journals. She was a poetry editor for Body Without Organs (which is currently on hiatus). She likes trying new things, and creating Spotify playlists. Visit her at jytan.carrd.co.
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