

Random poetry day!
Cardboard
by Alfian bin Sa'at
Trembling, as if drenched in blood,
Her fingers slide across
The whispering surfaces of cardboard.
She folds them, as if they were her mother's bridal gowns.
With the tenderness of a storyteller after the final chapter
And the final truth.
Curiously crooked,
She could live in a box,
Crouched like a foetus.
Aching with ancient pains
In old joints
Wind dribbles through one fist
Hope dribbles through the other
Another box collapses...
On the day she folds her own coffin
Out of cardboard, from a box
Labelled "Fragile handle with care"
I only pray that "This side up"
Points heavenwards.
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