Songkran by Kendrick Loo

This is the paradise I can understand on earth.

The coat check where we're asked to disrobe

and enter the dark maze. The foam guns, bubbles

piled high to cover our bodies, and the low burn

of need within. Earlier this week, the migration

had brought men here from all across the world.

Love occurs in every room, or at least mutual exchange.

Even if I am not comfortable with the body I own,

the darkness helps to coax out the animal in me.

I used to fear the maze and its confrontations, but

isn't it a form of freedom and choice? We choose

the years and seasons of the mind. I had lived

under winter's spell for so long. Steam collects

in my lungs, stoking the body's fires. A restlessness

had carried me away from the world of rules

to another. A man with a bull's back and black ink

on his forearm catches me by my belly, wrapping

a question around my waist. Questions we all know

but are afraid to admit. I turn to him, my heart

already beginning to run towards its destination.

Yes, it is a modest heaven. But it will have to do.

Kendrick Loo (he/him) is a Singaporean poet and reviewer. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his poems can be found in fourteen poems, ROPES Literary Journal, Moist Poetry Journal, and Sundog Lit, amongst others. He currently reads for Kopi Break, a literary magazine featuring new voices in Singaporean poetry. He posts on Instagram at @stagpoetics.

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