Dispatches from the void

After the fair

when there is just yourself and myself

and all the unfulfilled requests we sent each other

condense turbulent inside us

like fuel cells cooled by the rain

each word humming, filled with potential

What I wanted to ask was

how old were you when you came

to understand sadness, and how you could

never be free from it

and could never truly want to?

It startles me, the cruelty.

The optical nerve fancies it conjures the world

The envelope asks for you by name but offers

only the tiniest of windows

to peer out of

Cassandra Shih is a graduate of Victoria University of Wellington where she took poetry classes at the International Institute of Modern Letters. She lives abroad and writes much less often than she'd wish.