(Inspired by Michael Ondaatje's "Sweet Like A Crow")
Your voice sounds like a cup of iced Americano
brimming with crystal-clear cubes
Like the shattered iPhone screen
reflecting the blazing sunlight
through its minuscule fragments
Like a page of words torn off
from my favourite science fiction
Like a spoiled cabbage
a smashed watermelon
an overcooked egg
Like a prolonged lecture,
A professor rambling on endlessly
unaware of the dozing audience
Like a deflating balloon
venting in unrestrained delight
Like the dry, cracked, fissured skin
unable to be soothed by an emollient cream
Like a roasting chicken dropped into the crackling fire,
much to the dismay of the famished campers
Like the wind that carries away pieces of loose paper,
forcing the child to chase in vain;
the ominous dark clouds,
foreboding the coming storm;
the rain that poured down on an amusement park,
muffling the scream of teenagers on a roller coaster
Like the suffocating heat in a packed school bus,
and the bone-chilling current from North Pole
Like a girl uttering an unsympathetic rejection,
like a guy frowning upon a handmade card
Like a melted ice cream, a trampled rose
Like your shrill voice,
when mispronounced my name.
