Eric Yip

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依 / Depend

Waking, you unfasten your body from bed,
scout the dark for faces. The ochre curtain
shudders in the updraft. In your dream,
every room is like this: everyone you love
has abandoned you, bequeathing you
an abundance of clothes. Once, after school,
you followed another boy home, his shadow
snagging on a barbed wire fence. You stole
a pair of boxers, to keep him real. Each night,
you hug yourself like a straitjacket.
Your body grows used to its own touch.
Loneliness cannot be divested, only
delayed. Trust exercise number one: sleep,
not knowing if you’ll ever wake again.

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ERIC YIP was born and raised in Hong Kong. He was the 2021 winner of the National Poetry Competition. He is currently an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge.