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To Form a Reflection | Sandy Shen

I thought keeping her inside would help

It’d be better for her

stay green and pure

An idol, sweet and demure

Unburnt by slicing rays.


Yet when did she morph

Into a home for melancholy and fear

Always drilling a hole into my head?

She’s become a nagging sprite

A product of my neglect and spite


So only when the night is dead-heavy do I draw her out,

Cajoling her with promises of light and pretty things,

anything to remove her from her festered corner.

She emerges, suspicion and hope flickering in her eyes.


I smile in relief.


We know the tip of a pencil, the hair of a brush, the breadth of a canvas

are our only sources of solace.

Somehow, we harvest fresh peaches from the depths of muffled memories,

pluck tunes with the snapped strings of our hearts,

all under the shelter of the night.

It is the only time to make peace

To craft something from nothing.

But I don’t know who is more weary of this cycle.

She, who is constantly called upon in the dead of the night

for a passionate midnight escapade

Or me, who lives off sweet musings and false hopes collected at midnight.

Still, it flows constantly, and these brief night sessions are the interim

The double-glass plane between the hellish hours of the day

Keeping us going, keeping us steady, keeping us contained.


So the long night drags on

as she maps our worries and fears onto the page,

Leaving me to connect the dots and form a reflection.

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