"Unpopular Opinion", Don Shiau

How to understand — our opinions
are those of people we like,
more often than we’d like

to admit. We think we are thinking
when we are merely growing
towards our chosen suns.

How to explain — when none
like to hear? I won’t. You will
discover this as I did:

in cracks
spreading round your roots
as you stretch for that light

even as I strain to be liked
so that others may nourish me
with such unseeing agreement.

/ Don Shiau dabbled in poetry as a student in the 1990s, and only resumed writing after two decades. Some of his recent work was published in Atelier of Healing (2021).

READ: "Safe school environment", Gan See Siong

← READ: "Reflecting", Jana Quahe Rae