Amphibian
Land has dried its eyes, grown hard
hands and interrogates each arrival:
Where are you from, really from?
Are you skinlight, sunhatched,
from beyond the serried trees?
Answer these. The borders are closing.
I wear a different skin, night-
blooming and mottling with age.
Speckles swirl in constellations
across my cheeks, five shades of green
swell my throat; as a pied ball,
my heart hops. A body admits
teeming molecules, knotcurled
up against the wet reeds where
rain runs ropes into dark hollows.
Water opens its mouth, swallows
all the light and reflects an answer.
Do you see what I see? Really see.
A chinese-malaysian living in London, L Kiew works as a charity sector leader and accountant. Her pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books in 2019. She was a 2019/2020 London Library Emerging Writer. L Kiew’s debut collection More than Weeds is published by Nine Arches Press (2023).