Control by Hayley Khoo (Singapore, 16)

he who looks upon her with whims and fancies,
can never roam in tandem with the unfathomable.
the grappling chokehold the void the chains that
dredge through folds of skin void of willpower.
metal fragments slit through roots where gore runs
down in trickles of ruby burning down raw wrists.
the marks of desolation left to remain along with

nothing else but the fear that courses down
into the depths of thrashing bile waves rising up
her throat and pooling across her tongue in
bitterness rivaling the void beyond her eyelids.
the scars of lines slit gave her control of sorts,
over the asphyxiating haze of her incorrigibility,
a way to demarcate the anguish and to etch the
languish to be whole again in fine bracelets of
intricate webs woven across ghostly pale wrists.
she caresses the red crevices adorned across
those wrists in all their beauty of revival and will,
slowly and tragically entrancing.



Hayley is is a chronic daydreamer and ironically also a cynic. When she isn't contemplating her next gloomy piece, she spends her time contemplating her next gloomy piece anyways.