Sher Ting
I Wage a Question Against the Night
Is it enough? Is it enough? The clouds ripple
with prayer, laughing
at the human who always asks for more. More
happiness, more passion, more time.
More mountain, more ocean, more
sky. Night teaches me the language of want—
libation spilling upwards into the sky, darkness
yolked and languishing in desire. Teach me
to crack two wishes into a bowl - the world cracking
open in fistfuls of light. The gold a riot against the
night, folding itself into exit wounds in the sky.
These hands, the curve of an alms jar, shelling out
the whites of the morning-moon. Everything begins
in desire - a pregnancy, an answer, a song. The fetus
curled into a question. The baby’s first cry and its desire
for human touch. The dying’s final breath and his desire
to live. Were we ever without, just singular bodies
adrift in space, spread shallow like mycelium and
unfettered by primal emotion? Yet, I’ve only lived with
desire, never without, and I’d choose it again. Today,
the moon fell to marry the horizon and I sat in its lilac plumage.
I cracked two wishes into a bowl and stirred them
till they rose like the sun.
with prayer, laughing
at the human who always asks for more. More
happiness, more passion, more time.
More mountain, more ocean, more
sky. Night teaches me the language of want—
libation spilling upwards into the sky, darkness
yolked and languishing in desire. Teach me
to crack two wishes into a bowl - the world cracking
open in fistfuls of light. The gold a riot against the
night, folding itself into exit wounds in the sky.
These hands, the curve of an alms jar, shelling out
the whites of the morning-moon. Everything begins
in desire - a pregnancy, an answer, a song. The fetus
curled into a question. The baby’s first cry and its desire
for human touch. The dying’s final breath and his desire
to live. Were we ever without, just singular bodies
adrift in space, spread shallow like mycelium and
unfettered by primal emotion? Yet, I’ve only lived with
desire, never without, and I’d choose it again. Today,
the moon fell to marry the horizon and I sat in its lilac plumage.
I cracked two wishes into a bowl and stirred them
till they rose like the sun.
Biography
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Sher Ting (she/her) had lived in Singapore for most of her life before moving to Australia for medical school. She has work published/forthcoming in anthologies including Byline Legacies and Pages Penned In Pandemic, and literary magazines including Eunoia Review, Opia Mag, Overheard and Interstellar Lit. She is currently an editor of The Aurora Journal and a Poetry Reader for Farside Review. She tweets at @sherttt and writes at downintheholocene.wordpress.com
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