

The Jupiter Review
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.
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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