eavesdrop by Nina Sikandar (18, Malaysia)*

you know, it eats away at you feet first 
slowly I’ve stopped wanting to dance in my room
I used to bite my hand to stop the crying before my
mother rounds the corner    my birthmark like a tooth

---

if I slouch far enough
I still hear the acid in my stomach 
dripping. I always thought I knew what 
being human was like: always hearing my body whisper,
when it should’ve screamed if I needed to see the signs

on Tuesday it slides a letter under my door
and goes in its room to mourn, the letter says
she doesn’t know what to do, Trauma keeps smoking
its fumes & feeding it through their shared vents.
Trauma texts her back with a Spotify playlist
so she’d stopped listening to the stupor.

it’s quiet now. it’s mistaken.
if I put my ears up against these walls I hear the piano
I’ve stopped playing justly, a plastic bag fluttering by the window.
the monsoon is whipping fast these days, unfounded.

the planet, cracked at the pavement so I must be too 
you can’t bury a body in space
we’re not made of stardust

nine years old & dream-brimmed, nine & asking for immortality
in a place that isn’t here

in a place where silence folds on itself, like paper

that’s simple        you’re asking for heaven
it’s 5 billion years longer, I think you’re overestimating
how much solar wind howls until the sky turns red & hellish
& I could still be crying

you lied when you said nothing is forever​