Sonnet
(i.m. Robin Lim - 29 June 2002)

A woman gazes at a picture of her son.
She is remembering the sound of his voice
the last time they spoke, how the ordinary words
traversed an ocean and a sea, his unspoken
tenderness rippling in the distance between them.
She studies, through the window, cones scattered
from a tree she does not know the name of,
their broken geometry of love and loss.
The tree does not belong in this tropic heat;
each tiny brush of leaf shaped by its longing
for a temperate sun. She turns back to his picture
while we orbit lightly around her, an immovable
centre of grief. Outside, the hush of water gathering
in its pool, and the sound of a dove in the morning.

By Aaron Lee

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