"Maybe: Person", "Poem in which I justify my unfounded yet fervent beliefs", "Waste" & "Hands" by Allison Thung

Maybe: Person

Last night I lost one of my three phones somewhere in the house, so I called it with one of the other two, and the call came up as being from Maybe: Person, and I think it’s because despite looking like, walking like, talking like one, I am always just shy of being one, always wearing my Personness like an oversized poncho hastily swiped from the back of someone’s chair on a rainy day, or an undersized hoodie reluctantly borrowed from a slighter classmate in a freezing lecture theatre, so that I am perpetually ill at ease, to the point that there is comfort in discomfort, and certainty in uncertainty, or maybe I just need to fix the settings on my phone, maybe. 

Poem in which I justify my unfounded yet fervent beliefs 

Like how I should always say see you later instead of goodbye to people I want to meet again, despite it taking you and me five years to reunite even after I told you the former, because what is half a decade in comparison to an eternity? Or how a bruise must hurt to heal, so I apply balm like I am trying to budge a stubborn smudge, because who’s to say for sure that the eventual recovery is by virtue of the medicine or time itself, not pain? Or that there is some exact amount of want I must perform in order to achieve what I desire, so it doesn’t pass me by for indifference or desperation, even though I have succeeded and failed at random before, whether I was blasé about or burning for it. Because beliefs in this context is really a euphemism for superstitions, and superstitions need no evidence or logic. Only fear or optimism, and the ensuing brief hushing of the mind. 

Waste

How human it is, to peruse this lyrical verse turn plain prose turn trailing lines, and rue—what a waste. What a waste of time, and effort, and love; all that precious intangibility expended, only to yield not even crescendo, let alone conclusion. And how human it is, to then immediately refute the self, and demand—must writing always yield meaningful outcome? Must it always make coherent sense from start to finish; come to tangible fruition beyond the page? Could we not have written for the sake of writing; loved for the sake of loving? In that light, then, I do agree it was a waste. What a waste to halt the pen mid rambling sentence; to lift it off the point to it all even in the face of unmeaning. Now let me say this plainly—I do not regret you. You could never be a waste to me. 

Hands

I. 

You are alive, but only in memory. Once cold of your hands magnified thousand-fold in some attempt to extinguish the now scorch of your decisions. 

II. 

You are alive, but only in imagination. Even in a land of eternal summer, the wind is always wintry, so that the heat of your hands is unceasingly essential. 

III. 

You are alive, and then you are not. Lilies in lap, I watch them lay you in the dirt. From where I sit, I cannot see your hands.

Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY. Find her on Instagram and Bluesky @poetrybyallison, or at www.allisonthung.com.