A poem by MEI HOE
Parallel lines inked in 0.1mm pen
seem to extend towards infinity
or at least to the end of the page.
The sketches lack no detail nor do they
want for more in their neat completion
with the perfectly aligned windows in
free hand.
Your studio is organised,
Not a pen out of place nor a
book out of alphabetical order.
Your apartment is made of adjacent lines
With your coffee table exactly half a metre
away from the couch and each mug coaster
evenly spaced from each other.
Everything has its place and
there is a place for everything
are the exact words you live by.
Not a moment passes that you don’t
question if someone has tampered with
your neatly structured desk or your
perfectly positioned files.
The flowers from the bouquet are
arranged on your table as you
brutally cut each stem to the
perfect length so each are
perfectly aligned and
colour coordinated
and parallel.
The complexity of your thoughts overwhelms
the silence of your mouth like the delicate
lacework that you stitch and restitch into
tessellated perfection in your home and
in your brain. You hold the ring between
your fingers and you fiddle with it and you
inspect it to make sure it is perfect circular.
You get down on one knee; the only time you
tolerate the dirt as you hold out the box with the
perfectly circular ring and you ask for my hand in
marriage and I say yes and you hold me in your tight
grasp and we cut the Queen Anne’s Lace together and
arrange them by number of flowers on each little cluster
and you tell me that out of all things, I’m the most perfect.
