{"id":6354,"date":"2025-03-31T21:37:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T21:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/?p=6354"},"modified":"2025-04-01T18:55:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:55:14","slug":"rift-and-anticipation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/2025\/03\/31\/rift-and-anticipation\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rift” & “Anticipation”, Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gabriel Cheng, age 16, New York.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

1. Rift<\/span><\/h1>\n

B<\/strong><\/span>eyond the horizon,<\/span>
\nthe sun begins its descent<\/span>
\ninto darkness. From my boat,<\/span>
\nan off-white wooden petal floating<\/span>
\non the summer-calm Winnipeg,<\/span>
\nI breathe in the forsaken festival.<\/span>
\nUnshackled by night, swirling<\/span>
\nmixtures of maroon and black<\/span>
\nfrolic in the sky, like children of the sun<\/span>
\nset free. Slowly,<\/span>
\nthe hero of this requiem creeps up,<\/span>
\nits luminescence pale and misty.<\/span>
\nThen the stars, tarnished and enigmatic,<\/span>
\narrive, disrupting their lives<\/span>
\nto reach the moon<\/em>, everything<\/span>
\nattempting to rivet a frayed bond.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am an outcast in my home<\/span>
\nshrouded by inanimate shadows and feign,<\/span>
\nwitnessing from afar a tale of sorrow<\/span>
\nfor what could have been,<\/span>
\nKites mingling above star-kissed hills,<\/span>
\nfingers clasped with another\u2019s under<\/span>
\na candle-lit table, the laughter of children<\/span>
\norbiting the room like Earth orbits the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the ceremony comes to an end,<\/span>
\nmy body tilts with the breath of the sea,<\/span>
\nanother wandering soul exhumed<\/span>
\non a boat drifting towards and away.<\/span><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Anticipation<\/span><\/h1>\n

I<\/strong><\/span> wake up to my alarm, groggily, fumble for the snooze button,<\/span>
\nMy heart racing from the jolt. As the blaring ceases<\/span><\/p>\n

I rub off relics of the night, expecting clarity, only to be greeted<\/span>
\nby flurries of light cast from the window-framed sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

The door creaks as I stumble out of the shadows and into a man-made ravine,<\/span>
\nthe corridor dividing the subconscious as the sky does heaven.<\/span><\/p>\n

I enter the kitchen and grab a naked piece of toast. I pop it in the oven,<\/span>
\nwatching expressions crease along the crusted ridges of its face.<\/span><\/p>\n

With each bite comes the nostalgia of emptiness sunken deep<\/span>
\ninside and lurking within the cavities of my stomach.<\/span><\/p>\n

I shove the remaining sliver in my mouth and swallow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The futility hisses in my ears like an engine and something<\/span>
\npounds in my chest fiercely, trying to escape. But I don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

I descend the winding stairs leading to the blue expanse,<\/span>
\nwalk down the asphalt weathered by a trillion steps.<\/span><\/p>\n

I search for a raindrop, a signal I\u2019m heading down the right path.<\/span>
\nI look to the sky and wait,<\/span><\/p>\n

a moment of silence<\/span>
\nanticipating its touch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014By Gabriel Cheng, age 16, New York. He adds:
\n<\/em><\/span>\u201cI am a multilingual Asian-American teenager. Poetry and prose have always been my passion, driving me to become an editor-in-chief for my school\u2019s award-winning literature and art magazine, as well as news editor for our campus newspaper. Through both of these positions, I have cultivated a desire to spread my knowledge and to teach others. Outside of school, I\u2019ve built on this commitment to cultural access by tutoring English to Ukrainian children, and then teaching chess after the language lessons.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gabriel Cheng, age 16, New York. 1. Rift Beyond the horizon, the sun begins its descent into darkness. From my boat, an off-white wooden petal floating on the summer-calm Winnipeg, I breathe in the forsaken festival. Unshackled by night, swirling mixtures of maroon and black frolic in the sky, like children of the sun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,4,8],"tags":[924,923],"class_list":["post-6354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asian-american","category-family-and-community","category-multicultural","category-poetry","tag-teen-poetry","tag-teenager-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6354"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6361,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions\/6361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skippingstones.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}