abandoning long-held ideals of peace

because i’d hoped it would be as simple

as waking up one morning with both feet steady on the ground

sunlight leaking in, spilling clarity into every corner of our canvases

birds chirping in a rehearsed symphony, the breeze delivering its soliloquy

i epiphanize on balconies with my lover and we breathe in the saccharine summer

but in keeping things bottled up i’ve learned that

there is an art in orchestrating peace amongst chaos —

there may be no overarching theme to life but cyclical givings and takings

a crescendoing gain, a cacophonous loss

and as mad as it sounds, serenity can co-exist with agony.

when i absorb news cycles, i do it with misplaced pride —

i let the horrors bore into my eyes, the static enmesh in my mind

and in this hollow home, compartmentalizing quickly becomes second nature

drawers bursting with secrets, shelve any sign of weakness

with practice, staccato sounds eventually fade into the background.

so 18 is when i wait for serenity to arrive and this time it looks a little different

it looks like work leave, graduating poly, conversations over coffee,

smaller moments where i let the peace seep in

and it’s a lot more terrifying, reaching out for a more modest dream

of knowing serenity can simply sound like every resilient respite, sinking in.

__________

- poly is short for polytechnic, a type of tertiary education that focuses on preparing students for the workforce in specialised fields, i.e. where i’m at. one final semester to go before i graduate next April :)