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Sometimes, The Ocean Speaks To Me

Sher Ting

Have you ever spoken to the ocean?

I once breathed into a conch and heard it whisper

back. It tells me of how the sky draws its

languishing body into an embrace, of how each ebb

and flow builds another octave on the harpsichord

of luminosity, circling the shadow of the sun, scintillating

in the cadence of each spectered beam. It whispers of how

each centimeter beyond the golden shore cradles a thousand

nouns, sibilates in a verb and splays like an adverb stolen

from the uncharted vocabulary of paradise. The ocean moves

grazioso, grazing the inverted bowl of a kismet sky, and

tells me how light wanders lost in the hadopelagic abyss, yet

returns day and day again to break it open like a cipher through

a myth. It tells me how people, like light, are lost, but I am convinced

I’m not Narcissus. I won’t lose myself falling into mirrored depths,

won’t forget my name by the scar of a hedonic tide. Sometimes,

the ocean strings my heart by its teeth, yet today, my heart

holds allegiance to nothing, but the indolent mouth of an

ampersand, the turning of the tide an opening, the yawn of

a shorthand curving

into the great unknown.

 

Sher Ting has lived in Singapore for 19 years before spending the next 5 years in medical school in Australia. She has work published/forthcoming in Trouvaille Review, Eunoia Review, Opia Mag and Door Is A Jar, among others. She is currently an editor of a creative arts-sharing space, known as INLY Arts. She tweets at @sherttt and writes at downintheholocene.wordpress.com

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