Commended: Asha C-L, Catalogue

Asha C-L

Commended, 2026 Tower Poetry Competition, 'A Riddle'

Catalogue

I want to be an astronaut,
twine chiming stars with strands of hair
and lie in the sky, coiled like a snake-

                                     a cobra devours the sun, teeth fall from the sky
                                     like 8-bit mountains, refuse to dissolve in your
                     coffee as you stir and sip, salt  
                     in your sugar.

I want to be an internet suggestion search
bar flashing in the dusk.

                                    Offering answers that you do not want,
                      folding rotting leaves between my plastic palms
                      to press polystyrene prayers between the chambers of your heart-                                                                                            

                                      open up.

I want to be a washing basket,
cradle shirts and socks against a wicker chest;
                                     count the stains between my prickling walls and dream
                                     and dream of the time when I
                                     was the crown of the dumbbell trunk of a tree, when I
                     uncurled your fingers-

Now, hold them outstretched in the rain, and tear down birds;
the sky is savage, snarls behind a misery of clouds,
burning blue overflowing into

Your eyes. I want to be your eyes;
                                     spin in sockets like a ballet dancer,
                                     Light footsteps across your mind that glow
                                     in the Dark.
                     I want to be a flash,

Flash photography,
and drop myself in the fall of the shutter.
                                      Face down in the name of art, I will scroll
                                      through my memory like a detective,
                     like your aunt reading the sofa catalogue on a Sunday afternoon,
                     circling seating, biro lines across her face,

                     making notes in the margin:
                                   you don’t dig your own grave,
                                   you order your chair

                                  and then sit in it.