The News Say Jakarta is Sinking
The news say Jakarta is sinking but at night we learn how to
float. Ocean of skyscraper and the melody of rainbow-haired
musicians. I mistake a coral for the bone of a motorcycle
so we fish it out and glue our legs over the seats. We sail
half-balanced past streetlights. There’s a secret to this
flying that we have yet to master. There’s a secret to this
city — that one we speak in a third language:
in running across streets before sunrise, in martabak
out of open cars, in purple floors where we dance
our sweat away. Humidity sticky against our hips
like saltwater or wet-market coconut. Across town,
I hear someone laughing, maybe someone
I loved a year ago, younger. It’s a myth that nostalgia
returns for it never leaves us, never leaves our throats
saturated whole by the night or the arms of a city
that will never let us drown. So we laugh like nothing
can claim us, not now. Our bodies streaming in only
the softest current of metropolis, that space
where tomorrow turns into yesterday
turns into three years ago when we thought
we had enough time. Turns out, there’s never enough.
Only the livingness.
Tiffany Aurelia is a South-East-Asian writer and student from Indonesia. Her work explores the intricacies of memory, heritage, and her cultural background. She has won runner-up of The Kenyon Review's Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize and the Woorila Louis Rockne Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Emerson Review, The Shore, and elsewhere.