Aschea Ng: Poetry Collection

Questions for the Grave 

What do I know of death? 

do you feel it 

saturated in the dribble on your chin, 

caressing your lungs after every exhalation 

that wrestles through your lips, 

or encircling your swollen ankles 

like the foam of an unintelligible sea?

these days, do you dream 

in memories? 

Do you swim in moments trickling in from another life 

where your fingers were like wind

weaving thread through cloth,

where you did not leave sentences hanging,

where you could decipher 

the face of your daughter? 

or are you letting the silence take you?

are you melting beneath the blankets

that envelope you like a cocoon

or a coffin,

letting the time fade from your eyes,

the whisper from your lips,

the love from your fingertips? 

do you hold your breath 

wondering if you will make it 

to the next second?

or has fear numbed in your 

sunken cheekbones, 

dissolving in the folds of your wrinkles?

is blue still your favourite colour? 

can you feel mama’s silent teardrops

percolating through your indifferent skin?

will you forgive me for standing 

on the fringe of your bed without a goodbye,

tongue twisted in an ache diluted by distance?

is everything in this room 

a preparation for the end? 

the dimming ceiling lights,

the wallpaper peeling like worn lifelines,  

the saliva dribbling down your blanket 

soaked up just before it reaches your toes like 

a river cut dry too soon, 

the raggedness of coughing 

that comes more regularly than your heart beat?

what does it feel like to wake up 

as a corpse? 

did you feel your chest tighten 

when mama closed the door to your room

as we left on the last day 

even though she used to leave it open? 

do you stare at the fluorescent light

bleeding through the edges of the closed door 

and hate us for giving up? 

Columbarium 

If life is so heavy 

would death be weightless? 

A body shedding its skin 

in the dusky sunlight, 

unravelling into ash that weighs

nothing but a speck of memory,

a touch seared in empty spaces 

once filled with a heartbeat. 

Then why is it so difficult  

to forget? 

To wrench stitches through the wound

and leave behind a scar 

that you can say 

has always been there?

You still return every year,

squeezing your eyes close to wrestle

a bleary image of your pa’s face into mind, 

kneeling before his niche

that juts out of 

the columbarium wall

like a beckoning palm.

You whisper to him in 

Cantonese, wiping the dust 

off the plastic flowers and fake food

balanced before his urn

which must somehow flit through worn lifetimes

to reach his translucent palms. 

We huddle in the shadow of 

uncountable craters carved from grief 

that line the stone-cold walls. 

Most laden with model furniture,

unburned joss sticks, miniature dolls — 

speckles of life adorning death, 

a breathless attempt at remembrance. 

Others lie in the bottom corners 

gaping like half-finished memories, 

empty but a grain of dust, 

the portraits and inscriptions 

of obliterated souls 

evanescing in the emptiness of passing. 

We spend moments 

flicking over memories, 

awkwardly lowering our heads

as sadness heaves on our chests —

a complimentary necessity

in the presence of loss, 

our cheeks left dry as stone. 

Again, we remember that 

grief is selective,

a smoldering belief,

tripping between the limbo of 

gone meaning the end 

and gone meaning forever. 

interwoven 

for mama 

they always say i look like you — 

an empty comment strained through 

sugar-coated teeth.

you reply with a rehearsed smile 

and a laugh that is tepid enough 

to swerve the conversation onto a path 

that reminds you 

less of everything that makes us different — 

less of my hair that relishes in abundance as it

gushes from my inherited scalp, 

less of your own strands thinning 

under the splinters of unforgiving decades, 

less of my eyes that pulse 

with the infiniteness of an unfurling dawn,

then hopefully 

less of yours that are bleary

like the smokey residues of snuffed candlelight. 

you fix your gaze towards the milky distance, 

seeking anything to distract yourself from feeling 

less. 

i imagine you spend the cusp of late mornings 

rooted in front of your bathroom mirror, 

your reflection leaking   

from the cracks that rake across the glass like wrinkles.

when you lock eyes with the ragged contours of yourself,

is all you can see me, your unintelligible daughter?

the lines that stain your forehead blurring into 

my jaw, my nose curved like yours, 

my eyebrows that are bushy like from when you were a child —

and you realize that your reflection 

no longer belongs to you.

the day i took my first step,

you must have felt pain, like teeth

ripping flesh from your body. 

but what daughter is merely an imitation, 

a patchwork of a life that was once yours, 

weight you had to bear with splintered palms,

a mirrored image who makes you wince 

when she smiles too wide?

but remember ma, 

i am the one who looks like you, 

tethered to your body that i can never see beyond. 

my flesh will always be scarred 

with your name, and all your flaking dreams 

that i will learn to caress, wear, and finally meld into.

how we will rot 

mangoes are your favorite fruit

you spend $2 every lunchtime  

for that plastic bag of quartered yellow suns —

do you still love them when they rot? 

when their blackened skin pulls too tight over 

decaying flesh, burnt brown to the core, 

yellow sunshine melting into an eyesore. 

it is easy to ignore a mango that has gone bad, 

pretend the brown spots are stars

decorating its limp yellow coat. 

this is why why i’m still treading

through those monday evenings —

overpriced ice cream dripping through our smiles,

pooling at our feet like syrupy tears.

words overflowing from our mouths,

rushing deep into balmy nights

that we grasp to our chests 

until our knuckles are pearly white and trembling

with wishful infiniteness throbbing against 

the fact that everything lives 

in the shadow of expiration. 

some day, i will learn that rot 

does not take long to fester 

that our moments are now bone-dry 

and splintering at the edges, 

decaying in the silence that unfurls 

between the ripeness of new friends,

half-glances, 

empty conversations, 

goodbyes that become a relief.

when we part 

i watch the outline of your body 

melt into a silhouette that is 

too tall, too radiant —

you are a shirt that has always been too big 

to fit the bony emptiness of my soul, 

a skin that slips off to reveal my shriveled lips

that cannot unbind themselves from the sound of your name. 

the residue of everything unsaid

scabs over on the tip of my tongue,

hands sticky with overcooked afternoons

and disintegrating promises.

i will wonder —

do you still love us even as we rot? 

or will you 

stare blankly at the parched fruit

and throw it away 

while i cradle the decomposing mango in my palms

and let the rot seep through my fingers. 

About the Author:

Aschea Ng is a student studying Literary Arts in Singapore. Her poems have appeared in Evanescent Magazine, Project Inklink, and The Kintsugi Journal. She seeks inspiration from moments and sights in her life. She believes that writing is a projection of vulnerability and rawness, and writes to leave little imprints of herself on the world.