Faye Ng, Singapore
boughs laden with blooms, heads sunken low, like a 12-year-old boy chastised by his mother and repentant for coming in with his shoes all muddy, from running in fields of sunflowers.
this is how they begin, until the steadily humming morning peeks out from over the horizon to make everything a part of its yellow glow. heat warms the hearth and something expands from within; curved spines straighten vertebrae by vertebrae, ray petals unfurling to become a part of the yellow themselves. through the day, they adjust the tilts of their faces to parallel their counterpart’s arch in the sky, a parade of petaled witnesses.
at dusk I wander along the fields and cup a bloom in between my hands, marvelling at the textile and contour of its make-up, each vein and vessel a legacy of its geography. the whorls of disk florets spiral into an intricate centrepiece, a mosaic of memories. these Helianthus have found the Golden Ratio and known the Fibonacci Numbers even before the man himself, guarding history as it blooms from within the involucre. unhurried time passes as they die a quiet death midsummer, only to return full-bloom the following spring.
I watch the withering and blooming like a lung expelling and filling up again. breathe, pause momentarily, sigh — repeat, in a field full of yellow.
Faye Ng Yu Ci resides in Singapore. Her works have appeared in journals and anthologies including Raven Chronicles, Bookends Review, and ASINGBOL: an Archaeology of the Singaporean Poetic Form. She believes in the power of nature to reflect and affect our lived experiences, and finds inspiration from morning runs through the Singapore Botanic Gardens.
