Astrophobia

Written by: Jo Tam

A wish proved luxury, the urge to halt the showers

Strenuous runaways from cosmic dust to drop the fright

Astrophobia, an illness adorned with wonders

How could a girl, in her frail power, peel each crashing star from its might?

A long path stretched for loneliness to hit closure

Marked my map like a chessboard, still yet to be clean

And abruptly they jumped off cliffs to pen new chapters

Shoved me beneath the black yonder to be obscene

I dashed despite my straining legs

Toppled over when fallen stars stamped brands on my flesh

The in-betweens, the muffled begs

Astrophobia, so cruel, obscured the cosmos and its hatch

Blessings do descend their leverage from the skies

A shimmering manuscript, dances of signs choreographed in tranquility

Through all the fright I stole a glimpse of the epic high

And saw soliloquies marching forth to lead a symphony

Reasons behind cosmic tragedies, mysterious still

Grand tree in my heart mindfully growing out more figs

For I’d never be sixteen again with my mindless will

Flipping pages to make sense of it all

Onerous, my steps beside the star-worn treads

Astrophobia, a cliff curated for youth to soar

Terrains and orbits too vast to thread

Stories weaved together with loneliness as their core