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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Ahma*

By Ashley Tan

You were;

An unorthodox tree of life

birthed dimly before the blizzards borne by winter

fully flourished by the first blush of spring,

the rings on your rutted stump encircling the core of heritage

 

You were;

 

A maze of the universe’s deepest ambiguities

contained within the blues of your windows,

with piercing inner onyxes that mirrored the bleakest

shells of humanity raining from perdition overturned

 

You were;

 

A perfectly marred canvas of the ages

an adroit architect who’d carefully crafted,

an intrinsic labyrinth of peregrinations on your palms

which hold a century’s worth of the wars of our past

 

You were;

 

A voluminous library yearning to divulge the world’s secrets

yet inaccessibly barred by the barriers bred by my tongue,

failed by memory and hardened by circumstance

now a forgotten dialect left bereft and unsung

 

But in spirit

 

You are;

 

A fierce warrior hound braving the fleeting seasons,

ceaselessly straddling the fragile line between

impermanence and

 

Eternity.

 

*”Ahma” is Hokkien (Chinese dialect) for “grandmother”.

 

 

Ashley hails from a small sunny island proudly known as the Little Red Dot and holds an uncanny penchant for all-things pink. One day, she hopes to dominate the world in a princess dress and sparkly tiara – because who ever forbade warriors from dressing in style too?

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Six

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