by Conan Tan
The books age slower here.
Even at eighty, their spines still crisp, flat
against this wet thumb. I fish one up, follow
the choir of words like a hymn, like a lullaby
I remember in waves, calm and dovetailed, my mother
singing through every thread of light.
It’s the spiriting of time, the pages
soft as a leatherback coming up for a lungful of air.
Thunderous. Warm. The cover unscathed
by the wreck. I believe in storms.
I believe my mother’s spine washed up
on the shore. Her name caught
in the net like a title of belonging.
Her body a memoir of me.
Conan Tan (he/they) is a queer Singaporean Chinese writer. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in Rattle, Beaver, HAD, SUSPECT, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and elsewhere. The winner of Singapore’s 2022 National Poetry Competition, he is matriculating at Oxford University this fall. Find them on Instagram and Twitter @tmyconan.
Emerge Literary Journal 