preface.

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It is theoretically impossible to escape a black hole, as an object would need to be travelling minimally at the speed of light in order to overcome its gravitational influence. These poems have been arranged in reverse sequential order of approaching a black hole, to construct the narrative of escaping its gravitational pull. This concept is used as means to represent personal development, discovering oneself and taking action for what one believes in. It also hopes to symbolize breaking the paradigm, and fighting against perceived norms.

contents.

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I. SINGULARITY

the law of inertia.

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if we have to travel faster than the speed of light
to take time apart like a familiar game of jengamaybe that is why we choose to fit ourselves
into these little squares. we know what we cannot domore than what we can. so we spent
our childhood playing hopscotch, learning howto stand in the correct box. we are told that circles are good
crosses are not. and if we refuse to let shapes shape us,we’ve strayed out of line. years later, we learn black holes sink
so deep into their own weight, even light cannot escape.we decide that if we cannot chase light in our dirty shoes,
we will die swallowing it.by consuming, we are consumed; we let the gravity
open us up split skin break boneuntil we have to introduce ourselves
with a mouthful of debris.we should have listened after all. and yet
in the dead endof this singularity, i think about leaving:
i’ll bring all the light out with me.

expectations, radio silence.
 

not many things are
louder than graveyard silences;
the microwave at witching hour, collective shuffle of exam scripts
flipping open as the second hand ticks past
second-hand sympathy
handed out to us with our result slip.we die
slowly, footsteps falling apart. the sun
sets without a sound;
our heart still hears everything, decibels crescendo
decimals control
the degree of home in this house.and those voices behind the door, we’ve
heard them all before.

daily obituary.

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mornings these days feel like afterhours of a
funeral. the two of us, coffee-cup stains on the
newspaper no one reads.
it was then i realized i’d spent
six years four years three years one more year letting you define
my existence through my trophy count.
Sunday mornings
are reserved for repentance
in a sanctuary with ceilings that will never be high enough to contain
your expectations my obligations your friends’ curiosity but
yesterday afternoon i was in bed,
picking at the scabs
of my scars.
you are devastated, exasperated you are terrified because you have
finally understood that there is a stranger inside
your house, there has been a stranger in your house for five years now.after all, it is how we live: by chasing
the remnants of someone else's shadow when it gets dark everything
fades—
a gaping hole
opening up to a stranger, playing icebreaker with a mirror.
we don’t know
what we’re looking for, every day we want to die wake up a different person
want to be
whoever we weren’t yesterday maybe that is why
you never call me by the right name anymore.silence is a memorial between us no
television static echoing the batteries in the wall clock unreplaced i
stand up. you call me by my sister's name.

memory retention.
 

the first time i died, i was ten years old. you said
you wished i had never been born; i don’t think you realized then
what came after wasn’t much too different. you make me
want to snap my own neck, but that day the only thing that broke
was my heart. it grew hands
pried its way out from the cage of my ribs. slowly,
dragged splintered bone as it climbed
up my throat. so vicious, full of vengeance but
when my lips parted it
wilted into breaths so quiet, and vapoured like air. when i swallow
i still feel phantom scars. i died
but you did not know. it did not matter
you strung up the corpse and played puppeteer. do this, you said. this, this and
this. don’t do that. that, that, and that.
does a dead body retain memories from when it still lived?
i don’t know but i don’t remember many things. you don’t
like that. then again there is little that you like. something
dead tried to live. something
dead tried to laugh. i laugh often but it does not
make me feel alive. i am your
dead daughter. i am
the daughter you wished had never been born. when i was ten years old, i sat
under a desk and cried for the last time.
every time after was but a lonely liquid heart crawling
towards the sun.

II. EVENT HORIZON

second law of thermodynamics.
 

chaos was the law of nature.
order was the dream of man. 
—  Henry Adamsthe collective amount of disorder in the universe
is always increasing, chaos stretching with
expanding space
through a distance we measure in years.
i’ve never asked
why you structured our days as routine lists,
lives packed into little brackets of an hour;
sometimes i felt more alive when asleep, at least
my breath need not rise and
fall to the rhythmic tap tap of your knuckles
breaking morning against messy
desk. tap tap of your knuckles— insistent
knocking skull, demanding invitation
into my head. but my eyes
clenched fists, an iron gate
barbed you outside.

dinnertime eulogy.
 

i.
i remember what we used to talk about in polytechnic, on the bench outside cheers with our cup noodles and deadlines. all we wanted was to escape, break out of order. we would steal into unlocked tutorial rooms, hide behind whiteboards until security echoed past with their flashlight at 11 pm. when we had to leave, we would hide our student cards, take deep breaths and run past the guard house. we thrived off the thrill, chaos contained in chest. it wasn’t enough.ii.
our graduating year, we befriended a lecturer who nursed a universe within. he spoke with the force of the big bang, his words were rockets. our hearts spun black holes, swallowed everything whole and wanted more; it took us to kumamoto where we studied circuits, watched the moon wane twice outside our window. on my birthday, we walked three times along the streets of kamitoricho but couldn’t find any cake, so we settled for crepes at st. marc and you told me to pretend the whipped cream was a flame. i didn’t tell you then, but i wished that in ten years we would come back again.iii.
we hadn’t seen each other in seven months when you texted asking if i’d ever wanted to kill myself. the world slowed on its axis. what do you do to stop it? i told you to make a list of things you wanted to do; latch the window, let the tea brew. you left me on read for a long time. you asked me how i was feeling. i said not too good. we started meeting up for drinks more often, orbiting like binary stars in an unspoken pact of support.iv.
still, we spoke of death, fond as a lover’s name on our tongues. you weighed your options between urn and sea, i counted loose ends to knot. would you take your shoes off before you jumped? yes, because it was supposed to feel like coming home. death pried and settled into every crack, wove itself into small talk. it slept at the seam of our lips, threaded into spine and back. life is short, eat more chocolate; when i die, who would come to my funeral; is cremation expensive? a year later, you wanted to meet for dinner on a Saturday.v.
in the vast emptiness of liang court, tucked into a corner of marutama ramen, you told me you had decided. the universe kept expanding; more space, more emptiness. the garlic chip bloomed bitter on my tongue. i dropped a chopstick into my bowl. you laughed and said nothing would change your mind but that night, i still tried; my mouth full of beer and broken exit signs. when we said goodbye, you hugged me back for the first time. i cried the entire way home. the earth continues to spin, butvi.
i’ve been left behind. we had known it would be either of us, feeding into one or the other. you refused to forfeit me your orbit; i no longer found purpose in mine.

— falling out of love for the first time.
 

the first time you kissed me was the last time i kissed someone without your name in my throat; shape of your lips blooming purple and territorial down the column of my neck as i conquered your lap like a throne, beer simmering on your tongue. the first time i kissed you was the only time i kept my eyes open because all the other times after i needed denial to burn dark and heavy on my lids; pretend that more teeth is more smile, that strawberry vodka could replace the strawberries from your kitchen. months and i can't stop waking up in the places where we first met. years and i can't stop falling asleep in your skin; thinking about spaces between our fingers expanding into small infinities, and as we crammed mouth to mouth, a soundless void where the truth should be. i'm sorry my lips left bruises that weren't in your favourite colour, but your touch still boils under my skin like wildfire and i’m not done

constants.
 

i don't write anymore. i used to
think in colour before form, form
before picture, picture
before words. now i think in
noise. the only shade of it is white.
my professor tells me
the power spectral density of white noise is
a constant; every point is random, a thousand times
over, until they average into nothing.
i've always liked constants. but
i did not want this: time,
a standstill, life on pause. chaos
around me refusing respite. it is
constant, will not change, will not
regret. constantly loud, noise, it is white, incessant
seeps through the fade of black
everything in disarray; the formless
don't form words, the formless
form distance — slip through my fingers
slip into cracks. digging
only buries them deeper they want to rest but
will not die.
i can't write anymore. everything
repeats itself but cannot explicate there is
only noise. white. constant. i hear
all i want to say but
cannot tell and time
will not pass
no matter how much time
has passed.

they never taught us this in Sunday school.
 

this is the kind of tired where our lungs
ache. every breath feels
like the breaking of something new.
tired, of wings hanging heavy
from our backs; a constant reminder
of obligation we were not allowed to question
because faith is blind. we close our eyes
but still, we see the light. it pours
through the sanctuary’s tinted windows, stained
as red as the Communion wine we were taught
burns salvation down our throats,
come first Sunday of every month.
listen, listen only to the truth— the pleas in your head
are a monsoon. you undress your feathers like leaves.
this is your descent from Eden
into gravity: walking the gospel of the fallen
as how it was told in the Book of Matthew; every word.
as god’s hand falters around your throat, your palm
kisses the curve of a cocktail glass.
even whisky cannot burn
sweeter than phantom twin scars on your back.

III. ERGOSPHERE

i leave the door open in case home finds its way back.
 

after we moved for the fourth time, i learnt
to stop leaving parts of myself behind; to stop
letting places build into me for foundation:
stone and wall, unstacking from holding up
into weighing down. every new house burnswith a different brand of suffocation
sour-sharp sting of paint that clings to air
even with windows cranked wide open.
i didn’t know what home meant then, yet
i knew it was more than this: endless shiftingof boxes and people. familiarity chasing
into foreign roads. a different bus
on the same highway, that misses the
exit leading home. continues on straight
trudging, nonchalant like the path of time.if we could pack everything into boxes,
my hands would not falter as they stole
letters from walls, locked photographs
under plastic, silenced smiles
in the smothering dark of cardboard.if we could pack everything into boxes,
i would bring the space: cracks
in the walls that hold remnants of
eavesdropped conversation, one tile
from the kitchen floor that stillblooms pink from red food colouring.
bring the age of blue-tack stains, sanctuary
behind the door where she kissed me.
a corner in the house where i laughed
until patterns on the wallpaper blurred.if every coordinate runs on a different clock,
grows a world of its own, leaves footprints
in empty space— you cannot tell me that home
can be uprooted and thrust into new ground.
you cannot tell me that space is void whenit isn’t the vacuum we believe it to be.

space debris.
 

i.
everybody talks,
their words like meteors skidding
over skin, rough rock.ii.
we make wishes on
dead stars, believing hope to
be born from ashes.iii.
home has no radial
escape velocity. no
singularity.iv.
this is not the end.
we are without an axis;
spherical confines.v.
gravity will not
bind us to an orbit we
cannot call our own.

mark your graves.
 

the first time feels like a burial. curiosity kills; the spoon is a thin silver shovel, your fingers sink into coffee grounds like a gravedigger. searching, wondering. it is wet, still warm with heat from the espresso machine. wet— earth after rain, prelude to full bloom; curiosity teaches. the settings on the machine are pre-calibrated, your manager assures that you don't have to pay them mind. sometimes you still do— wind the knobs clockwise, slowly. every marking that passes acknowledged with a soft click. as a customer approaches, you turn them back the direction you'd meddled. after all, it's not like you could have fast-forwarded time that way. the hours always pass like broken clocks. lazy, sleep-riddled weekdays, packed into spoonfuls of three-dollar meals from the convenience store. your shift isn't until another hour, but these are the kind of minutes that tick with every tap of your finger against the table. later, you'll pack coffee down like soil into round coffins. every crackle of roasting beans settles like a childhood cradled on your tongue. this, your father had said, is a latte. that day, you learnt that coffee with milk has variants, and he prefers cappuccino. there's sugar on the floor again. faces come and go, you only remember the ones who forget to close the door behind them. in the backroom, the ice machine whirs; it is different from home but feels more like one. these hours spent perfecting pouring milk into picture, for your art to end up smeared on a stranger's lips at first sip. but keep your head up, the chocolate sauce on your shoes can be washed off. unearth the grounds, bury your mistakes. this latte can be made again.

love letter from an atom to the universe:
 

skin regenerates itself every twenty-seven days. perhaps that is why you tear into me, relentless; we chase every glimmer of permanence. teeth breaking sinew, breaking bone. i have never stopped you. here, the bruises i leave in echo: in the shape of my lips, ghost of my fingertips, closing around the hollow of your throat. at time's end, you are always the unreachable entity i have finally grazed with my hands; i will always be the speck of dust in your eye. everything here is built for collapse. the collective amount of chaos in the world inevitably increasing — we are alone, then we are not. and then we are a system so entangled we feel the other's slightest tremble, across eons and a distance we may only measure in years. spaces between us expanding into eternities. disorder around us dismantling into disarray. there is a law that forbids mass from being created or destroyed, so i am always rearranging myself into parts of you that remember my name. but i am only one, and every part of you feels like coming home. i am here, i am there, and you are everywhere. in my dream, i am not insignificant. i am not trivial, an indivisible unit of matter. i want to hear my blood thrumming in your veins. i want my fingers on your skin, like meteors skidding. i want you to cram yourself into parts of me. our weights coalescing, until i collapse into myself, until i fall through the spacetime continuum. i will swallow all the light, kiss you with a mouth full of every sun. i will bring you into the depths. i will ruin you. there is an order to certain things in this world: the earth revolves around the sun, every action demands an equal and opposite reaction, and it has always been me drowning in the pull of your gravity. on the twenty-seventh day, the universe remains ensnared in orbit; history resumes its litany of cycles and i am not afraid, of the vicious.