Afterglow | Faye Ng Yu Ci

I once saw a black beetle sucking nectar 

out of hyacinth: its beady eyes rolling,

its gleaming back two blades of wings. 

Its bristled arms clung onto the bloom,

its violence sending the dense clump

oscillating. I want to be a flower, to

exact a desire so luscious and tender.

I once lay in a place so still I could 

hear nothing but my own movements.

There was a dim light through the wall 

and shadows, shapeshifters, things

that snuck out at you in the dark

without noise. I do not know how to 

describe them but they were my hands.

Crawling on fours, soft in my joints,

gurgle and slur, baby talk until you

touch me—my skin blank to the

hyacinth’s fragrance, the dull throb 

beneath its exclamation. Time falls

like a cradle through the trees, augur

to the ripening of self, an opening.

Faye Ng Yu Ci resides in Singapore, putting frames of light into photographs and verse. Her poems have appeared in Raven Chronicles, Bookends Review, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.