Mellified

Written by Vanessa Cheung from Hong Kong, China

Dipped in honey, sweet, warm gold

Tell me, tell me, why that’s so                       

And if I move away, let my gaze turn cold,  

Extinguishing our radiant light of old.

Starlit lustre, tarnished time,

Waxed poetic by the gods

Reflects refulgent light–silvern swansdown shine–

To shed my sins upon your altar stone.

When your fingers brush over mine,

Live electric light does arise;

From lidded eyes, bereaved, comes a hymn of cries,

A solemn solace that I never knew.

First forgetting verdant fire,

Numb in all its rusted gleam,

A dream that wraps a cloth round a blind surprise,

I fall in your stead– 

An eye for an eye is only fairness

When we’re both dead.