Beyond ditches betraying all the dirt we emptied from pavements, so our camp may contradict its affinity to rust and other wounds inflicted by time's suburban neglect, a line of chalk mediates between the heroic and those who have to try again. Dawn—dew collecting enough irony for perspiration. We sprint past this pale crevice not knowing how to run towards by running away, a stopwatch squandering days we will never again be as swift, as unaccommodating. This is what my father meant of youth humiliating its targets by firing at heads when the chest will suffice—cruelty a more generous excuse for time. In the distance, roads cleaving into focus as sparrows flee from accelerating footsteps, only to realise the horizon is but chalk stranded between two dead ends like a smile.

Having completed National Service in Singapore, Jerrold Yam will be pursuing undergraduate Law at University College London in September 2012. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Mascara Literary Review, Poetry Quarterly, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Softblow, Singapore Memory Project, The Substation Love Letters Project, Moving Words 2011: A Poetry Anthology, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection will be released in early 2012. He updates at http://jerroldyam.wordpress.com/.

<<