The Arm I Carry

On By MeiLingIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I have stood where the light forgets its name,
boots sunk in the grammar of broken ground,
breathing in dust that once was a home—
and no hymn rose, only the low machine of staying alive.

You sang of brothers.
I have buried them.

Not in verses—
in silence thick as wet earth,
in the careful folding of flags
that never feel large enough.

There is a moment—
you know it, if you’ve been there—
when the noise stops meaning anything.
Gunfire becomes weather.
Orders become echoes.
And all that remains
is the man beside you
breathing—
or not.

I have held a hand going cold
and felt no glory pass between us,
only a question
neither of us had time to answer.

You called it “arms.”
We called it weight—
the rifle, the pack, the gaze you carry home
that does not unclench
even in sleep.

Yes, we are brothers—
not by blood,
but by what we have seen
and cannot return.

But listen—
there is no romance here.
No clean horizon waiting to forgive us.
Only the long road back
where every step sounds like memory.

And still—
if I had to walk it again,
I would.

Not for country.
Not for the songs.

For the one who walked beside me
in that unlit place,
who did not look away
when the world did.

That is the oath
no anthem ever holds.

That is the arm I carry—
still.

星期三好鬼玩

On By MeiLingIn Chōka, PoetryLeave a comment

鬧鐘又扮醒，
星期三裝到好乖，
其實心好串。
咖啡跳出杯口，
我笑到企唔穩，
半週都畀我玩。

The alarm pretends it’s awake,
Wednesday acts perfectly innocent,
though it’s clearly up to mischief.
My coffee leaps from the cup,
I’m laughing myself off balance—
midweek is mine to toy with.

The Other Side of Brownsville

On By MeiLingIn Poetry, Free verse2 Comments

You always talked like the road was a witness,
like it kept a ledger in dust and bone,
every mile a confession half-finished,
every name something you never owned.

I remember the night folding slow around us,
cheap neon trembling in a cracked motel sign,
you said love was a thing that outlived the body—
I said, then why does it die in mine?

And the radio coughed up a ghost of a singer,
some worn-out truth wrapped in a tune,
you leaned like a man already leaving,
like the tide don’t argue with the moon.

Brownsville—
you wore it like a scar you kept touching,
like proof you were still made of skin,
but I saw how your hands kept shaking
every time you tried to go back in.

You said there was a woman—there’s always a woman—
standing somewhere between sin and grace,
but your voice dropped low when you named her,
like you feared she might take your place.

I didn’t ask if you loved her or lost her,
those are just words men use for flame,
I just watched how the silence held you
like a priest who forgets his own name.

And the night came down like a verdict unspoken,
heavy as breath on a glass that won’t clear,
you said time is a thief with a patient hunger—
I said, no—it’s the keeping that kills us here.

Brownsville—
it ain’t a town, it’s a wound that remembers,
it’s a door that won’t stay closed,
it’s the echo of something unfinished
in the way your story froze.

You kept reaching for something behind you,
like the past was a coat you misplaced,
but I saw how it clung to your shadow,
how it stitched itself into your face.

And me—
I was never your saviour or sentence,
just a moment you couldn’t outrun,
just a hand that you held in the darkness
when you forgot who you’d become.

So don’t tell me the road makes you honest,
I’ve seen how it teaches you lies,
how it dresses regret up like freedom
and calls it a clearer sky.

Brownsville—
you can keep all your ghosts and your legends,
your saints with their cracked alibis,
I was there when your truth started breaking—
I saw it in the back of your eyes.

And if you ever make it back through it,
through the dust, through the names, through the blame,
you’ll find nothing was waiting to claim you—
only the sound of you calling my name.

Easter Monday

On By MeiLingIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

The stone is still rolled back—
but no one is watching now.

Yesterday held the miracle
like a breath too bright to keep;
today, the air has settled
into something quieter,
more difficult to name.

No trumpets.
No angels rehearsing light.

Only the ordinary returns—
cups rinsed at the sink,
shoes by the door,
a sky that refuses spectacle.

And yet—

something has shifted its weight
inside the body.

Not faith, exactly.
Not joy, either.

More like a door
left unlatched
in a house you thought was sealed.

You move through rooms differently,
touching the same walls
as if they might answer back.

The dead do not rise twice,
and still—
you listen.

There is a softness now
to the way silence holds you,
less like absence,
more like a hand
that does not insist.

Easter has passed
into its echo—

and you remain,
carrying the afterlight
in the small, unguarded places,
where even doubt
feels almost
like belief.

Easter — The Morning That Refuses Closure

On By MeiLingIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

They go with oils—
carefully measured grief
carried in small, breakable vessels.

Mary Magdalene walks first,
not because she is unafraid,
but because love has already undone her once.

Mary keeps near—
not leading,
not behind—
as if she has learned
how to remain
when everything else departs.

And Salome—
quiet, watchful—
holding the question no one wants to ask aloud:
who will move what we cannot?

Morning has not yet decided
to be light.

The air still carries
Friday in its mouth.

They speak in fragments—
half-formed sentences,
as if language itself
has learned to tread carefully around loss.

Then—

the stone is already gone.

Not broken,
not shattered—
simply…
no longer where it was meant to remain.

This is how it begins:
not with triumph,
but with dislocation.

Inside—

no body.

Only space
where certainty used to lie.

I know this place.

The way absence can feel
more present
than anything it replaces.

A figure waits—
not blazing,
not terrible—
just enough
to disturb the shape of reality.

“Why do you seek—”

but the question does not finish,
because it enters them
before it can be spoken whole.

Risen.

Such a word—

too large for the mouth,
too alive for the grave.

And yet,
it does not close the wound.

It opens it wider—
into something that breathes.

They do not rejoice at once.

They tremble.

Because resurrection
is not comfort—
it is a rearrangement
of everything we thought
could not be undone.

I feel it now—

not as light,
but as a subtle refusal
in the dark places of me
that once accepted endings
as final.

Tell me—

if even death
cannot keep what it claims,

what will you do
with a love
that returns
without asking permission?

Holy Saturday

On By MeiLingIn Poetry, Sonnet1 Comment

The world lies folded in a breathless tomb,
A silence pressed against the edge of light.
The air is thick with unfulfilled perfume,
A vigil held between the dark and bright.

No footsteps stir the dust of mortal ground;
The city sleeps beneath its shroud of stone.
Yet in the deep, a hidden pulse is found—
A stirring where the buried are not lone.

He walks the caverns sorrow cannot name,
Through halls where ancient shadows cling like frost.
His presence moves like fire without flame,
A warmth that gathers all the broken lost.

So Holy Saturday becomes the seam—
Where death unravels, thread by thread, toward dawn’s first gleam

The Hour That Stays

On By MeiLingIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

It is not the nails
that hold him—

it is the consent
to remain.

The sky does not break at once.
It tightens, slowly,
like breath withheld too long,
like a truth no one wants to finish saying.

I stand at a distance
I pretend is reverence—
but it is fear,
the kind that watches love
and does not intervene.

There is a body
made into threshold.

Not symbol—
not yet.

Still warm,
still bearing the memory of touch,
of mouths that spoke his name
as if it could never end.

And yet—

the ending comes
not as a cry,
but as a yielding
so complete
it unravels the air.

“Forgive—”

even now,
even here,
where the world has narrowed
to wood,
to blood,
to the unbearable clarity
of being seen
and not spared.

I feel it under my ribs—
that terrible mirror:

what does it mean
to love
and not turn away
when it costs everything
that can be taken?

The earth shifts—

not in violence,
but in recognition.

Something is finished.
Something refuses to be.

The veil—

yes, we say it tears,
but I think
it simply gives up
its pretense of separation.

Nothing stands between now.

Not innocence,
not distance,
not the careful stories
we tell to soften the wound.

Only this—

a silence
so full
it presses against the bones.

Tell me—

when even God
chooses not to descend
but to remain
inside the breaking—

what part of us
still believes
we are untouched?