by Sher Ting

饭1 and 烦2

Funny how two words phoneticised the same in Chinese
but meant vastly different things.

How 饭 was the ivory harvest from fields of salt and rain,
ploughed to fruition through thunderclouds and a wrist of light.

How 烦 was the keening of a storm,
the frustration of a sky at the weight of its libations.

Maybe that was what I was—wild rice,
the amalgamation of two entities,

growing with increasing frustration at a body
with too little love for me,

opening my hips the width of the sky,
waiting for the birth of a harvest.

Originally from a sunny island in Southeast Asia, Sher Ting is a Singaporean-Chinese currently residing in Australia. She is a 2021 Writeability Fellow with Writers Victoria and a 2021 Pushcart and Best of The Net nominee with work published/forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Eunoia Review, Heavy Feather Review and Kissing Dynamite. She tweets at @sherttt and writes at sherting.carrd.co