When We Finally Speak by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

Coming home to you,
I lapse comfortably into
our native tongue,
eddying in its lilts and lulls,
carousing in the famed crescendoes.

It will take more than years
to bridge the gap
from which the words slip,
silken and smooth,
waltzing down the hourglass.

On flows the tide.
We watch together how it beaches
on the embankments, its
sturdy rhythm perhaps dictated
by the familiarity of shared time,
shattered, brilliantly sparkling,
under the unrelenting glare
of today’s sun.

Brilliant and broken,
as if borne of winecase glass.
We toast to our health.
I wish that we will live forever.

Yet, I am sure
that our shared eternities, and
the infinite worlds between,
shall be interminable. When
I open my mouth to speak,
and your eyes are not there.

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