Rough outline of the metaphysician’s backseat

Phoenix Tian, Singapore

Stray cleavers stick to the back of my knees and I count all the things worth praising. One, a version of this where we listen to Portishead instead of George Michael. Two, that Sunday when I scouted the best elevators for us to bite in, teethmarks that chaos gods and Cartesian demons could never recreate. Three, unwarmed spaghetti as worship. And then there are actions unforgivable to most, like how you turned me silly when your thumb and index opened like a parenthesis. Time slipped through, all points intersecting. We imagine the future as a horror story in freefall. The one where we end up holding our faces eastward, so close to the barred windows, foggy rivers, windshields thick with frost, driving up a snow-covered road. You roll down the windows slightly and a wind demon slams shut the book in my lap. It is saying that our theories hold no weight. That night, we realised that every discovery needed a good soundtrack, the chorus like an old bandage. I don’t think I’ve ever dressed a wound; I’m no good with my hands, but I can sing that overplayed love song and sing at once every multiverse where we’re born in the same timeline as Kant. And you can tell me to open. I’ll swallow.

Phoenix Tian is a 16-year-old Singaporean poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, ALOCASIA, The Garlic Press and Genrepunk Magazine. She likes talking to herself.