They expand

by alice liang

There is always more beyond the homeward buoy,

The jagged reef and bony keel of a small ancient disaster,

A looming longitude of unrest and failures of sympathy.

Safer to be on the land, to stay in the haven of misconceptions.

Distance is huge between two horizons,

Crimson flame trying to warm cobalt ice, an impossible gap,

An attempt so violent to the self,

That bleaches every tenderness.

The jarring hearts themselves amazed and confounded,

Could not understand how a one-way road could bifurcate

Into two dead ends.

They gaze and gaze longer, but no sails are set.

The mirage afar shivering in their vain hopes

Refuses to come alive.

Flood begins to attack the shore.

Stiff feet drenched and heavy like boulders,

Limbs untended swinging in the blaring wind,

Hair wet and adhesive to their cheeks and necks,

They decide, in the end, to forsake the solid ground.

One tentative inch is enough;

The rest expands in a blink.

When they dock the desolate isle,

False dreams burst on the pins of sharp discrepancy.

They cannot believe that they have never noticed

Even evergreen has shriveled grey;

Bluebirds fluttering crippled wings have fallen under haphazard hail;

The rich juice of mulberries

Have now been seared into the bitter rain of May.

No tears could compete with the flood

That has silently mounted into a deluge that inundates

All insidious delusions.

It would be the end of a misguided story

Of flimsy shards residing in a cracked, embellished casket.