sans the new soul by Cheryl Tan (16)*

for Jamie (she/her)

you are diagnosed with lost, doppelgänger’s wanderlust
curate an identity in language and code, polylingual coupons
out of the sinking sandbed you call home but look at you:
camera in hand, eyes shuttering, the truth wrapped in
plasticised tears. this is dislocation as you know it, normalcy
bleeding your heart’s chrysalis, a butterfly broken mid-escape​

forsaken behind the mirror. tell me, pearl in the oyster,
was it worth shrouding yourself in second-hand nacre
beneath makeshift polygraphs and shoddy long shots?
you taught me enough maths for me to know that
if life were an equation you’d be the first to solve it. you’d
find its centre, wrench it dry as printer paper and then
sit back to watch it crumble a              part, a potpourri of
hospiced ideals and waiting seats. my friend, are you
still right where he left you, your boy’s silhouette
mumbling “sorry, no can do” to an empty chat room? are
you still out there hanging from the rails of uncertainty
snagged on the high of stolen opportunities, half-mistakes
living from one fractured stake to the next until you realise
it’s all flesh photography in the end, the psyche fitted in
frame and blown up? bloated verbosity, your fish-eye lens
capture the nights you spent spilling out of your skin
dreaming a new body              ​sans the new soul