"On Flying", Lune Loh

a translation of Raimi Safari's "Dan Lalu Ia Terbang"

Maybe it's because you're like the sun.
And it shall be here where I stay,
weave pigeon wings
until I can carry the burdens of the self,
approaching you every morning.

This dream, alike a box with beauty-in-beauty, burdens.
And in my dream of flying later,
flashed a murmur in my heart,
the cruel scorching warmth of your love
shall melt, bead by bead, this candle of a wing. 

But can I stop?

For now, I am certain to be
sad in the heart when this wing melts,
and I fall, collapsing back into my native soil 
before it could reach the clouds or the rainbow,
nothing alike the resonance of this fallen heart,
by my compulsion

I gaze into the silence, alone.

/ Lune Loh is a core member of /S@BER, and finishing her undergraduate degree at NUS. Her works have appeared in Evergreen Review, SOFTBLOW, Cha, Cordite, and various SingPoWriMo issues from 2017–2019.

READ: "MY MOTHER HAS THE MOST PAGGRO METAPHORS", Low Kian Seh

← READ: "The Bird", Lune Loh