The Waiting Flame

On By Meiling CheungIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

The night leans near my door,
and the rain is whispering there;
the curtains breathe, the lamplight wanes,
and something moves upon the air—
not wind, not rain, but something more
than either, and less than a name.

The room has grown strangely still;
the clock is far away.
The wine is warm, the window dark,
the last pale edges of the day
have fallen from the sill;
and my heart, that would have slept,
has waked beneath its quiet keeping.

O beautiful night,
how softly thou dost enter—
not as a storm, nor as a flame,
but slowly, as the tide draws nearer,
leaving no mark in sight
until the shore is changed.

I taste the hush before it breaks.
There is a sweetness in the air
that neither asks nor promises,
but lingers, lingering everywhere;
and every breath my body takes
makes the waiting more complete.

The wine burns low within my blood;
my pulse has found another measure.
I hear the rain, I hear the dark,
I hear my own heart answer
the footsteps of an inward flood
that rises, though the surface sleeps.

And what am I beneath this light?
Not what the daylight calls me—
not guarded, measured, wholly known,
nor mistress of the world around me;
but something waking in the night,
something the darkness understands.

My skin remembers what I forget.
A touch imagined becomes a trace;
the smallest movement of the air
seems almost like a hand laid there,
and every silence makes me wait
with an impatience almost prayer.

Yet I would not have the moment haste.
No—let it linger, let it remain;
let desire deepen where it lies,
like hidden roots beneath the rain;
for there is sweetness in the taste
of wanting what has not yet come.

The hour grows deep. The candles lean.
The shadows lengthen on the floor.
I hear—perhaps I hear—the sound
of footsteps pausing at my door;
and all the dark between us seems
to tremble without moving.

Then nearer comes the unknown hour,
and nearer still the breathless flame;
the waiting gathers all its power
and gathers it without a claim.
I do not call. I do not cower.
I simply listen for my name.

For there are things the heart will know
before the lips have learned to speak;
things that arrive without a sign
and make the strong appear almost weak,
not through surrender, but through the glow
of wanting what they dare not seek.

So let the night draw close to me.
Let rain fall softly on the glass.
Let all the world grow dim and far,
and let the secret moment pass
only when it must—
only when waiting itself has become the flame.

And if, at last, the silence breaks,
if one low word should cross the room,
I shall not ask the night its meaning.
I shall not question light or gloom.
For all the longing that it wakes
has already learned your name.

The Sweetness of Absence

On By Meiling CheungIn Free verse, Poetry2 Comments

The night speaks soft, yet softer still
is she who enters thought unseen;
no footstep marks the dark, no will
but memory, moving where she’s been.

Her breath returns—not breath alone,
but something warm the blood recalls;
a voice the waking heart has known,
that crosses sleep’s uncertain walls.

I fear the morning not for light,
but for the arithmetic of loss:
that what is held so close tonight
may become distance, counted cost.

So let my fingers learn her skin
as though the flesh were written truth,
each hidden curve, each tender line,
a scripture time has not yet touched.

And when I breathe her sweetness in,
I do not ask the night to stay;
I ask that what the senses win
be not so easily rubbed away.

For love is strange: it makes us rich
by teaching us what we may lose;
and every kiss becomes a stitch
against the hour that would unchoose.

Thus she haunts sleep, and I confess
the haunting is the sweeter art:
for absence sharpens tenderness,
and wanting keeps her near the heart.

An answer

Where the Blood Went Quiet

On By Meiling CheungIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

The room grew thin—not dark, but wide,
As though the walls had learned to breathe;
The clock released its little tide
Of iron seconds underneath.

The sheets were cool against the skin,
The window held a winter rain;
Somewhere a kettle clicked within
The ordinary world again.

Then weight withdrew. The body lay
As something briefly set aside—
A coat still warm from yesterday,
With no one wearing it inside.

No trumpet split the listening air,
No golden road unrolled its thread;
Only the strange absence of care
For what the living call the dead.

I heard the rain touch every pane,
A thousand fingers, light and exact;
I tasted salt, then metal, then
The clean cold mineral of fact.

And consciousness—if that be named—
Was neither flame nor ghost nor breath,
But thought without the little cage
That makes a border out of death.

Below, the body kept its laws:
The heart negotiated, slow;
The lungs persisted without applause,
The blood remembered where to go.

Yet something vast had opened near,
Not somewhere else, nor far above—
A silence almost intimate,
Too lucid to be called by love.

I saw no heaven dressed in white,
No dead returned to claim my name;
Instead, the smallest things grew bright—
Wet glass, a pulse, a thread of flame.

The world had never been made new.
It was I who had ceased to press
My little meanings into view,
Demanding from the dark a yes.

Then weight returned. The ribs drew tight.
The room came back by grain and grain;
The clock resumed its patient bite,
The kettle clicked itself again.

And life—imperfect, fierce, obscene
With appetite, with touch, with chance—
Came rushing through the senses, clean
As rain across a naked branch.

Since then I trust the ordinary more:
The hand, the mouth, the turning head;
The warm cup resting near the door,
The living weight beside the bed.

For death, when briefly let me near,
Was not a kingdom, gate, or shore—
But how enormous life can be
When nothing in it feels assured.

閒日

On By Meiling CheungIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

日光慢慢入羅幃，
暖似蜜香，薄似息；
枕邊春意未曾歇，
一身慵展若狸枝。

不為塵途催半步，
且任清茶冷玉卮；
指過素瓷留微暖，
心隨水上一縷絲。

靜非怯，閒非缺，
寸陰今日不須追；
天地若教風雨急，
我偏閒坐聽香回。

一襟如月垂肩落，
半日沉入鬢邊香；
無事原來非無味——
人間最慢，亦最長。

Let sunlight wander softly through the room,
and lay its amber patience on the bed;
the linen keeps the warmth that fingers shed,
while noon grows golden in the quiet bloom.

No summons stirs the heart to seek its doom,
no little hour stands accusing overhead;
the tea goes cool beside the porcelain,
and thought drifts loose as silk beneath the gloom.

The body turns, and stretches without haste,
a living curve that asks no end or aim;
the breath moves slowly through the loosened waist,
and pleasure needs no witness, nor a name.

For time, when freed from being made to race,
becomes a room—and stillness fills the space.

The Hidden Threshold

On By Meiling CheungIn Free verse, Poetry1 Comment

Upon the velvet altar of the night,
Where shadows weave their heavy, silken lace,
A secret pulse seeks out a hidden light,
To find its home within a sacred space.
The breath is caught, a ghost against the skin,
As trembling hands trace paths of ancient fire;
The boundaries of the self begin to thin,
Dissolving in the heat of deep desire.

A slow invasion of the inner keep,
Where silence dwells and secret rivers flow,
Into the hollows where the senses sleep,
To wake the embers in a rhythmic glow.
No word is spoken, yet the spirit cries,
In tides of pressure, heavy, deep, and vast;
Beneath the veil where primal longing lies,
The present moment melts into the past.

A yielding shore against a rising sea,
Where tension coils like smoke within the bone,
To seek the core of hidden mystery,
And claim the kingdom that is theirs alone.
Through gates of shadow, heavy and profound,
The pulse of life seeks out its deepest well;
In every shuddering, exquisite sound,
A secret truth of union starts to swell.

Then comes the crest, the white and burning foam,
A sudden shattering of wall and gate,
As wandering spirits find their final home,
And leave the world in fevered, breathless state.
The echoes fade into the cooling air,
The fire retreats to embers, soft and gray;
Two souls remain, stripped naked, raw, and bare,
In the quiet wake of what they took away.

The Intelligence of Love

On By Meiling CheungIn Free verse, PoetryLeave a comment

He knew the sound beneath a sound—
the latch before the door was turned,
my footfall altered on the ground,
the kettle’s hush, the lamp that burned.

He read the weather through the glass,
the gull’s low angle, sheep’s unrest;
one lifted ear would let him pass
from dreaming into watchfulness.

I gave him fields, and winter walks,
my hands through burr and rain-wet fur,
the little language made of looks,
of gesture, whistle, touch, and stir.

He gave me something harder won:
his fierce attention, whole and free;
the sudden arrow toward the sun,
then back—his dark eyes finding me.

He knew the grammar of my face,
the minute weather of my breath;
and when the world had lost its pace,
he waited without asking why.

No human wisdom filled his head,
nor borrowed speech his purpose wore;
he understood the things unsaid
and watched the opening of each door.

He was no creature merely kept,
but will beside my will, alert;
a mind that ranged, a heart that leapt,
a presence threaded through my work.

And what I gave was not enough
to name the bond that grew between—
for love was forged from ordinary stuff,
made bright by all that passed unseen.

He taught my solitude to move,
to hear the house before the rain;
I gave him shelter, time, and love—
he gave those hours their life again.

So let the years unfasten sight,
and take the shape I knew away;
what he awakened does not die—
it alters how I meet the day.

For I was loved by something wild,
yet disciplined by love, not chain;
a brilliant, watchful, border child
who gave me back my world again.