Suspended in God’s gelatine, the stars are
various unnamed slices of fruit, plucked
off the last tree in the world. We are all
ark-like on this blessed day, this day
of endless rainstorm and wind, the
invitation letter of an eternal flood.
Or – I might be exaggerating. Some
times call for simpler things to be
written about. It hasn’t rained here
for months it feels like a biblical event.
I have been twice-drenched today
under my brolly dressed in sakura
and my feet have felt the same
as the pavement for too long.
The dried-up dreg of the nearby lake
takes a breather, its belly filling with
life again, which we pray will not
leave us prematurely. Some things
are simple, merely existing for their
own sakes, for the pleasure of being
read and forgotten, rather than
deified as a metaphor. Metaphor
has a way of doing that, you see,
turning one-off scenes into print.
I pick and choose from my traumas
like Noah deciding which 2 to save
out of the millions in the species
which he left to drown – everything
else was then born again from them.
Imagine how it was like to be him,
having to decide which deaths
were to be realised. I am slowly
approaching the state where I
am forgetting that I told myself
was beyond my control, as though
losing count of sheep in a wheatfield.
The rain is pouring yet again. I snap
out of it. I forget what I was writing
about. I continue to try and pluck
at the feathers of death – so clean,
so silky, so wet yet so plump.


Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.