boats

boats, changi village
medium: watercolour
size: A3

you and your photographs of departure
that repeated metaphor of departure
or simply the possibility of a voyage?

what you cannot tell me you tell me
with a vessel and its single passenger,
eyes fixed on some skylit conclusions.

set apart and starkly upon a canvas
of tractable waves, brought to still
by the trigger-click of your camera,
like the sound a key makes
when it releases the lock.

your heart became that lock; these images how you have
always articulated distance, a withdrawal.

darling, there are just as many ways
of saying goodbye as there are ways
of letting you go.

the boat is narrow
like the width of my heart after
impossible loss, cruel resignation;
this heart you ride in.

love, if this is how you choose to leave me
let me let you.


- cyril wong, below:absence