THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.

bear with me,

i'm not quite there yet,

still blowing warm breath on my triple coated fingernails,

adjusting gears to shift lanes on the short-tempered road,

trifling through the cassettes to run into the one

that smells like sweet-toothed mint from back home,

and a l m o s t is too simple a word

to describe this impatient yearning of

finding familiarity in this place that

is not

so kind.

there is an emotion that is all-consuming

lately, it has

burrowed itself a tiny tunnel underneath

the third layer of my skin

and languishes there in pretentious ridicule,

a constant reminder of

the sentences that tripped on the tip of my tongue

and took away with them the dreams they were sheltering,

the camera reels I never hoarded

if i ever forgot the boisterous bounce in our steps

in the uptight corridors,

the things I thought I would be but which now

merely exist as witless imaginations in a dust-abandoned corner

and r e g r e t is too small a word

to narrate this desperate, bittersweet reverie that has

dropped a heavy anchor inside me

of what could've been and what I didn't do, the streets

are much too thronged to hear the final reverberating thud of

the monstrosity.

and i'll forever be a force on the verge of not being a trivial tragedy,

looking day after day

after day

to see if i've painted the dusk and dawn

doing enough of something that encompasses me with the madness

and sensibility of loved things,

if i've felt the soft touch of humans and air and penguins

existing here with me on this tiny lump of beautiful rock

so insignificant in the vastness of space and time, so home to

the only beings i will ever know and meet,

if i've abandoned enough of myself to sit with other people's

creations, peeked through the cloth a little at their souls

and their magnificent unlikeness,

and it isn't about not doing enough of everything every day,

my fingers have spaces between them that need to be filled with

another's.

i'd arrive at the end of my existence knowing that i've

belonged with something and someone, been so loved

like the rain loves the earth - inevitably, and loved so in return that

there was no space for anything else in the heart,

our eyes have met and stayed

and i have understood

everything

and been unmade,

that i've been something other than a trivial tragedy for a while.