A Conversation

Poem

By Cheryl Tan

For Aimi (2007 - 2023) 

and Chanel (2006 - 2023)

He told me he loved me, down there in the country, when the world stopped turning to face us

both. A place furthest from the tide, like the churchyard of a city. Built for us and only us alone.

I was a pianist, years of fingers that will never touch a keyboard again, the blacks drying up on the

whites. I wore a braid to fix the last slivers of hair off the side of my face. I left them long to make

myself look pretty.

There was white on my face that I could never scrub off. Mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, a

halo so bright there was nowhere else to see it. I looked beyond the railing and all I saw were stars. Millions of primordial fluid. 

Something like that. I went to sleep that night and woke up somewhere else, where else I cannot really

say. A metre of space stretched into bouquets, the sirens mute and unhearing. Tomorrow encroached on

yesterday.

Are you okay? Your courage is commendable. There was a no and a why before the time there was

you. My last moments were a rush into the ether, a portal to another world. A kinder world. 

I had sisters. I had something to wake up for but I didn’t. I knew I could 

sing and I knew you could too. Music on the path to 

a different time and place. 

The times my mother would stay up late, so late, to bathe me and brush my hair, the moon a

swollen roar into the distance. Anything for the sake of a memory shone. Beyond all else we have

already gone home, and here you stand to welcome me.

---

Cheryl Tan (she/her) is a Singaporean poet. A Free Flash Fiction Competition and Singapore National Poetry Competition winner, she has been published in fifth wheel press, Parallax Literary Magazine and Streetcake Magazine, among others. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize, and her chapbook “Goddess” is published on Querencia Press. She is also a long-suffering EIC of Project Inklink's Litmag.