By Cailey Tin
we’re made of what we eat. the lights / enchant souls that can observe & lay bare. they know you stomached invisible food. who else / can see through the hunger wondering why you’re still starving for attention. the greatest possession: when we own what we have the least of, it becomes denser / than gold. why is this chamber / named the hall of dreams, air dressed in scintillating orbs while you breathe in nothing but dust? these are the daughtered newborns of a star after a wish was conceived within clouds of dust. who scrutinizes guiltless infants as much as you? twinkling of milk teeth after mother coveted it. you, full-grown adult, part your lips, exhibit the pearls beneath. acquire jewels / but want more. grin but nobody looks after smiling back to the saliva that sustains itself / in your pharynx, incandescent lights everywhere, brighten weakening senses. not only yours. everybody will die for something material. a lantern in this room will feed them full enough. instead, you desire to be one, fading away after finishing its duties as a placeholder. you empathize with the floating orbs, transparent like glass. a dream / ricochets beneath each short-lived lid. you can see the contents like they’re concrete: a boy longing for his sister to walk again. a father praying / to supply his six kids separate bedrooms & in the time ahead, separate houses. if only he could afford it for each forehead—brightness is impractically alluring that way. you can look elsewhere, instead you yearn to be a star on its deathbed with constellations bordering / to help mother moon navigate you from afar. they reach & reach for each other’s hand. utter farewell & “in the next life, don’t be ordinary.” every one of you / beneath the warm maternal gaze, / yet inside this room a firefly-like lantern glares. there is no cluster of heavenly bodies wheeling / around yours. your desire has not metamorphosed from dust. it’s trapped in between saliva & windpipe. the ever-present ache of idle esophagus craving for edibles / you don’t relish with adequacy is churning with famine. absence replenishes itself as space gas. your rib cage is porous. the exosphere easily seeps in. look around. you can’t clench any luminous entity appearing this glazed. don’t mystical objects pounce away from adoration-seeking wrists; also distinguished as dried-up plants? once watered, creased leaf pining for the residue of an aged droplet / or adult tear. when you were a seedling, / you were cried over. now, this sky has no stars spared / to spoil you. brave the drought. / feign the coolness of being rained on. you will not dance in that upsurge / at a later date; collapse to your roots & plead to the lights that a lantern buried deep in its photons is for you / to be cared for without uprooted. your stem remains / a keyed-up child, peevish & hankering. now you realize why this place is called the hall of dreams. how do you hold on to an orb, discern its skeleton until it splits into a set of stars, rising & revolving / watching over your buds. how do you soak / in all the night sky’s sparkle (who thirsts for water once you receive downpouring orbs / who goes through photosynthesis with this luminosity) before the luster can nourish itself / & illusion dazzlingly; feed & empty your hollow stomach.
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Cailey Tin is a Southeast Asian-based teen creative. A critical writing manager and spoken word co-host at Incandescent Review; she is also a columnist for Paper Crane Journal, Spiritus Mundi, and Incognito Press. When not editing poetry for The Borderline or Sophon Lit, she’s (imagining) chipping away at a strange new piece.
Diamond Gazette 