Art by Amber Liang

Content Warning: infant death, violent imagery

i wanted to thank sisyphus

for rolling the rock up the hill

only to watch it     roll down again —

i rolled a rock

to my baby’s grave

but it failed to roll back down

it stood erect

like the apathetic night of conception

where careless whisper played —

and after which my

mother wept — 

flag poles also stand vertically

soldiers upright

and mary at the altar as the masses pray

trees outside churches are very straight

until they snap —

why sleep eternally?

i followed the railway tracks

extending further away

without looping back

i lay — flat — waited

for the train to be the knife

cutting the meat into two

double the graves

but it chugs only      further away

the watchman said to me

the whistle fades

into silence

only once

i told him of

multiverses —

you were conceived and Born

raised and Gone

like the smoke of my cigarette

igniting        extinguishing 

and collapsing into the wasteland

of my ashtray —

there you were

Breathing    Breathing

mouthing polyphonies and symphonies

before hallelujah played behind the bagpipes of a Veiled parade —

you had My eyes and My spinal cord

a guest in My womb

unborn, newborn, now Gone

i became the second skin slipping into your laughs

and collapsing into your silence —

drunk and anaesthetised i could feel you

rocking in the cradle

while you sunk into the casket

further and further away from me

they closed the coffin and gave me hallow words

and a golden goose

which swam further and further away

(on a lake that froze —

where do the fishes go in winter?)

give me a boulder

to roll up a hill

only to watch it

roll down again

roll it up for me sisyphus!

and let it fall

except the boulder’s erected

next to the tomb mouthing

auden’s funeral blues

give me your boulder sisyphus!

or let your boulder roll over Me instead —