Face Reading
Two fingers can turn
with ease to violence:
some things must not be
permitted to grow,
so I weed with the white lie
of remorse
the limp strands
that a woman who traded
her worn schoolbooks for refuge only
to grey in entrapment
has said means I was touched by fire
and so will be
cold to the touch,
brightest before
slow death and joining the rest of
them,
those whose brows and eyes
are too ashen now to be even told apart.
I pay my respects by hand, quick in
the manner they left us
so that what remains is the
fear we never manage to sweep away.
Travis Chi Wing Lau, "Face Reading" from Hypertext Magazine. Copyright © 2021 by Travis Chi Wing Lau. Reprinted by permission of Travis Chi Wing Lau.
Source: Hypertext Magazine (Hypertext Magazine & Studio, 2021)