Cluster bombs of ashes and metals and petals of you and me and him and her suffocate the air in the blizzards of fears swiveling our globes. Billow. Billow. We were born flowers: sunflowers, roses, chamomiles, daffodils, edelweiss, golden wattles, jasmines, orchids, chrysanthemums…We cried flowers. Tears polish and sharpen their blazes of our shattered reflections. The thunders of viruses, the lightnings of conflicts, the tornadoes of lack and void slash thoughts and bodies of hopes. Inside and outside. “Can you see? Can you hear?” Visible and invisible. Audible and non-audible. The voiced and voiceless dissipate in explosions of anger, greed, grief and pain, and die again under the bloodshed knives. “Where have all the flowers gone?” Fairy tales we told. Stories last. Flowers in the glass domes stained with the beastly shadows awaiting true love to cease the departure of petals from their ovaries. Our histories and His stories. Break the glass. He plants all the flowers, valleys over valleys, mountains over mountains, streams over streams. Rooting and netting and binding and building to the surface of the land to rise other flowers. We were flowers. We are flowers. We will be flowers. We will wither; we will bud; we will burgeon; we will bloom. Beam. Beam. We will see. Doves descend from the torn open sky. There is a hymn for us all.
*Winner: 2023 Valiant Scribe Poetry Competition
Flo Au won the Most Creative Award in HK’s Top Story 2015. Her pieces are published in a number of literary journals. Her work was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2019, Best of the Net 2019 and Pushcart Prize 2019. Her poems were commended in Norman Nicholson Lockdown Poetry Competition 2020 and awarded as the top ten finalists in Voice of Peace: 1st International Poetry And Short Story 2021 Asia Edition. Her monologue was also selected to be one of the top 30 in Lancaster One Minute Monologue 2021.