HOPE

by Julian Matthews

to honor the families of passengers and crew of MH370 on the 8th anniversary of the airplane's disappearance on March 8, 2014

Click here for MH370: An Interactive Presentation by The Straits Times (Singapore), March 8, 2022

Hope is the cold metal hanger in my heart 

where I hang the coat of all my warm memories of you

which I put on to feel your hug, 

your firm arms around me

Hope is the candle I light and re-light in my mind

remembering all the ways you glowed

All the ways we melted into each other

I keep the flame lit so I can still feel

the burning longing for you to come home

to see grace in these shadows

Hope is the light I leave on all night, every night 

awaiting your return

Hope is a kite on the high wind

I hold on to this unfurling string, 

unwilling to let go

even as you get smaller and smaller in the distance

in the blue, blue sky

I shade my eyes as you merge in the lap of the light

Hope is stubbornly willing this line between us

to never, ever snap

Hope is the ship you last boarded waving your goodbyes

from the handrails

Hope is me waving right back at you from the port

my arm hurting as it gets heavier and heavier

and you, further and further

with the passage of time

Hope is your silhouette on the horizon

bobbing on this sea of heartache

Hope is the salty tears I cry on nights like these

that could fill the ocean between us

Hope is this piece of the broken plane

I found on the beach

that you may have brushed against lightly

as you walked down the aisle

This drifted debris I hold in my trembling hands

Hope is placing my ear against it, cheek against shard

to listen to your last message within--

I dreamt again of you last night

like the thousand dreams before

You grinned cheekily, your eyes smiling

as you stepped through the front door

I asked you, nay, demanded:

“Where have you been?!”

And you reached out, pressed your palm

against my chest, my honeycombed heart,

and replied calmly, sweetly:

“Here, always here, my love...”

Hope is knowing that is true

Hope is awakening to that truth

Hope is the only home I know

Julian Matthews is a former journalist expressing himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in The American Journal of Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The New Verse News, among others. He is based in Malaysia.

DELIVERED

by Julian Matthews

“Dinner With Friends” Painting by Victoria Coleman

A poem on our first meeting after being in a writing workshop on Zoom for six weeks, and in various lockdowns for a year and ten months.

And so we sit at the table partaking of a meal,

the home-made, home-cooked, home-delivered

a gathering of friends, new and old,

unmuted, unzoomed, live, in-person, fully embodied,

greeting each other like refugees

meeting on the dock, our boats having survived

the treacherous crossing of middle class suburbia

and stepping back onto the shores of human connection again, 

wetting our cold feet and lapping up warm chatter about pets, 

pasta, pastries, prices, politics and the pandemic, always the 

     pandemic,

and, thankfully, of our common love of books, and writing and 

     poetry

and missing sitting in darkened theatres with strangers, to watch 

     a movie,

or a play or just chilling with a warm-up, pre-concert cocktail, 

     perhaps a long island tea, 

or two, before listening to an orchestra, fingers fondling keys, 

     bows caressing strings,

lips pressed against mouthpieces, hugging tubas, the tsk-chizz 

     of sticks on cymbals, 

being enveloped by the sensurround sounds of music played by 

     real, in-the-flesh humans...

And in the end there is laughter, ribbing and the teasing out

of each other's backgrounds, our reasons for being, why the 

     need to put words

on rectangular screens, this unboxing of the isolation inside us, 

     this shedding of thickened skins,

double-vaxxed, immunized, and unmasked, fully ensconced in 

     that most singular of human acts,

the Art of Conversation, manifesting our ancestral DNA of 

     gathering around the embers of dying

fires under stars, trading stories, sharing opinions and yes, even 

     gossiping,

just to know we are alive, 

we are still alive.

Julian Matthews is a former journalist finding new ways to express himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nine Cloud Journal, Poor Yorick Journal, Borderless Journal, Second Chance Lit, Poetry and Covid, the anthology Unmasked: Reflections on Virus-time (curated by Shamini Flint), cc&d magazine, a Scars Publication, and forthcoming in the American Journal of Poetry. He is based in Malaysia.