DEVENIR

CELINE KAO

AN EP OF POEMS, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN REDRAFT

COLLECTIONS 2015-16

Never Have I Ever

Never have I ever kissed your eyes like I did
When the smell of meat and apples blinded the
Sweet spot on those half-lit stairs, frozen in time like
I had wished for, three rain-drenched Aprils in a row.
Light puddled in the folds of the sheets and the space between your fingers
Whispers became pinpricks from a goddess you have not met
A laugh fired from between gunpowder teeth, fingernails and wetter eyes
Grand collision of flesh and spirit and falling into smoke you never saw coming
Hair slicked towards a cold sky, like a wave catching its breath mid-air
the clink of amber glass and secrets dribbled from vermillion borders
the clink of the umbrella on wet asphalt
the clink of our hearts knocking together on wood, unfurling the curse of
a distance that knows no limits, but somehow we keep
finding x in paralleled destinies
Of all the places I have forgotten, it is not the flavour of time measured
in teaspoons, a song sprinkled with lemongrass
or your sister with her helium lungs, after three years of hard water
your hair is soft, and my fingers are softer, but the question marks
between us are softest, and I sink my teeth into your raw grasp
The moon blown out over a dawn drifting to the ground, watching
you tumble six feet under into your dreams, your breath drags,
and I think my dying wish is to skitter my fingers
across the train-tracks in your spine, and pray well fall equally as hard when
the heavens release us back into the atmosphere

2016 CELINE KAO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Stockholm Syndrome
I met you at a time I was afraid of colour.
In the midst of that bleak spring, timelapses of a
violent sunset blossomed between the taut
Lungs I had been fumbling with, staining blank
seconds that stretched into hours
stretched into days
stretched into weeks.
my therapist said the sharp taste of life ebbs and
flows, that this was nothing more than a classic case of
emerging from the plastic box, the glass cage,
the proverbial bell jar three months after the other one
Lit candles in my chest and burnt the temple down, the
Last resort for a heart that kept breaking.
then you happened, and I started breathing in shades of violet and
dollops of gold, and all the stars Id lost
Dripped back into my heart. Smouldering,
Pungent, a foreign taste unlike the cool water Id
always known
we packed years into twelve weeks, days whipped past in
Fast forward. I watched your mother grapple with her
Thunder, and though the lightning struck your wrists and
echoed in my gut, I needed to believe your embrace was
stronger than silk. Even as your eruptions
smeared me thick with lechery, smothered me in shreds of your
clothing and self-loathing
Maybe you couldve even said I loved you.
Maybe I could not tell if that was a lie.
my daddy always said fire was a harbinger of
Tragedy, these days he watches me try to swallow forgiveness
for each night I inhaled your leaden voice,
tasted the coal in your mouth;
for each night I let your blood swirl over me and
I catch myself breaking nails scrubbing my insides of
your poison like the morning after is
caught on replay. Scars sting with the fresh of yesterday,
burning itch to peel off my skin to rip off the stitches strapped across my bones
The armour remains welded.
Body shrieking beneath the poltergeists but the exorcists only know
how to pry the dagger from my neck, the sole plug in a
naked gaping wound
david foster wallace spoke of a burning building:
It is not desiring the fall; its terror of the flames
after ground shock snapped every bone still youre shrouded in the
nostalgic smoke of an imperfect summer
a sixteen-month long war against remnants of you with

2016 CELINE KAO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Antiseptic and new music, draining you from the walls of memory
(for each day that drowns me deeper, I am tempted to tell you:
thirty compressions, two breaths, one hundred beats per minute
but you won't need it.)

2016 CELINE KAO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Ce que nous avons fait

Inspired by Sarah Kays Questions and Answers, in No Particular Order
I dont remember the number anymore, but it was on Primrose Street.
When was I prettiest in your eyes?
Fifteen minutes, but you kept saying twenty-two.
Would you like a napkin to clean that up?
Orchid. That night lingered in my room until infinity faded.
How far did we run?
Blue, but blue like daybreak, not the jazz of night.
Why were you counting my breaths?
All the times you yelled at me for adding more salt.
When was our last kiss?
Three p.m. lust.
Did you feel the months stacking into seasons?
Spaghetti bolognaise, with one too many tomatoes.
Could you tell by how many inches of rain there were?
Vignettes of yesterday etched into the wall.
What did you do after we said goodbye?
Yes, but my dreams escape me like water evaporating.
What could I have done instead?
Nothing, because it was never meant to last anyway.

2016 CELINE KAO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Symptom Girl
She asked me if she was the problem girl. She had given
up on smearing concealer on her wrists, industrial strength
would not cut it anymore.
A dose of sleeping pills, with a side of
cheap vodka for dinner on gourmet
Tuesdays, she had been
surviving by way of things that would slowly kill her, an
ironic cause of life for her life certificate.
Her void looked a lot like the ghost I was
chained to, the one who wished for flight down a seven storey
building, three winters ago.
I watched her bleed as people lived
between parallel lines: beside each other, but never
touching; screens tinted their favourite shade of alone.
Humanity weeps in the corner at
this era, where ego lies in the thumbs of the
populace, and compassion drowns
in the wake of illness.
Paper-thin friendships crushed her bones,
and she band-aided her
skin with cigarettes, until she was nothing more than smoke and
mirrors; but she was not the only one with broken insides.
I answered that she was not the problem girl, but the
symptom girl.

2016 CELINE KAO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.