Lunchbox Poems

Strange how we do not alter ourselves
to fit the dimensions of this room
in order to fill it completely.

Through the years, the floor, which is
also a wall, has been hiding our tracks.
The invisible tracks lead out to the yard
where the grass is impossibly overgrown.

We can grow up, you see, learn new words,
read more books, fall in love more often
than necessary. Then perhaps, we can
move out and abandon this house,
this ghost town, and perhaps, perhaps
the world is not a swarm of houses after all.

We have our notions of childhood,
and they ache to be suspended in place:

how a house discredits itself
how a house wants to be rebuilt

Upstairs, we hold hands with the
versions of ourselves, the dead girls
who will live and live and live.

KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM