Polyphony
The tree we’d mourn exhales no final breath.
Secrets carve no rings, only a gaze left in silence.
Yesterday’s smile still lingers in the empty swing,
While whispers hidden, as a riddle only time knows.
A mayfly casts fleeting shadow, its pulse
echoing with heartbeats, carried away
by tides and monsoons, where the sea waves
crusting gritty rusts, with hardened solitude
piled heaps and heaps on the coast.
Memory spirals and surrounds
like golden glimmering drizzle,
breeding mosses in the shade
where even tender steps recoil.
Under the lamplight, a child’s sweet sorrow
trembled between tongue and teeth,
The gates of remembrance sparkled, a coaxing glow,
awaiting a knock by unnamed innocence.
The Cocoon Years
If not for our reunion
in an iridescent rain puddle
how can I reminisce those years
so long cocooned in silence?
Footprints on the steps, once counting fallen petals
at the twilight of spring;
in the scorching summer, shabby fans hung and swaying—
whirring, stirring up our restless craving.
scraps of torn comics swirling—
like autumn maple leaves;
we trimmed the tendrils of desire,
fitted ourselves neatly into hardened shells.
Yet our clenched fists, swinging slow,
still lagged behind the marching beat.
So we shifted into new postures
wrenching against the cocoon, cracking
The cocoon years—walls scribbled
with mistaken formulas,
the glass mirror bending the daylight
reflecting a pale, gaunt face;
souls bound tight by threads,
chained deep within the darkened core,
whispering prayers
towards faint gleams at the exit—
though the veins in my wrists
had already scratched open the shell,
why had I seen, the dawn of final gallows?
It was amid the screams that I saw you on the rooftop
of the teaching building, your wings thrashing
beneath sleeves that flapped wildly.
an apocalyptic downpour wore away your body,
tempering hardness into something tender.
Your eyes, in a sudden silver
curve of fleeting flare, illuminated me—
even a speck of dust can cleave its fate.
Celia Lan is a bilingual writer from China exploring hybrid life writing across genres. She has mainly written fiction and creative non-fiction, with recurring themes of memory, diaspora, and queer identity. She considers writing poems as a tunnel into the territory of a new language. Celia is currently preparing for her Creative Writing PhD.