A BROKEN CHINA

 


A BROKEN CHINA

I have a thread / round each wrist /
which I know I can unstitch / anytime I
wish. / Hands freed, thumb crossed, /fingers
restless as wings, / I have become that
crow / roosting in my dreams.
From the poem 'notes for a suicide' by
Felix Cheong

My marriage was a match
that unmade me, my husband
has Malaria of the mind.
But I will make my own
escape, fly away, like Icarus
from this medieval maze
of the Minotaur. My husband
is no myth and you will
never know him until you break
the code of my silence
and decipher the writing
on the war and the Braille
copy of it on the paper
of my flesh. Read then,
with your fingers the abrasions,
bruises, contusions, dislocations,
ecchymosis, fractures, gashes,
haematomas, indurations, wounds.
My husband is two nations
warring within one continent,
the divided, the split,
the cleaved. Sometimes he's the potter
I'm the Ming vase shaped
on the wheel of his fury.
Most times he is the bull
in the shop of my ceramic heart.
Twentieth floor high but I believe
I can fly. It is midnight
and there is no sun to melt
the wax of my wings
but does it really matter
when I'm already a bruised
b
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(Art Work: "Paper Batik", wax and water colour,
entitled 'A Broken China', 2i August 2006 )