Stephanie Suh is a poetess based in Los Angeles, California. Her poems have appeared in Anomaly Poetry, The Raven Review, Belladonna’s Garden, EgoPHobia (Romania), Poems Tales & Other English Words (UK), and Poet in Verse Journal (UK).
Poems for morphrog33
The Klepsydra
The jar is heavy, glowing blue,
filled with days, nights, and me.
Drop by drop, in the dark,
in sleep, in sadness,
it siphons everything within.
Happiness cannot stop it.
No magic can undo it.
The water thief drains the hour
from the clock of my life,
with no gears to break, no hands to seize.
Hermes does not control this thief.
The Fates guard it,
so no one can halt the flow.
The clock makes no sound.
It bleeds. It drains
the cascade of hope
that my hunger-shaped silence
turns into longing
through the flame of youth.
The years the Fates poured
into my water clock run too fast,
faster toward the bottom.
With cruel stealth, the quiet injustice of Klepsydra
moves unseen.
Let the Fates watch the level.
Let them see the salt on my face.
If my youth is sipped away,
the Fates will not mark the loss.
© Stephanie Suh
The Double Body
The first light of sunrise opens the window,
and I return from the night’s drive on my moon chariot,
driven by my two cats—Toro the tabby and Camille, the black—
whose words I do not understand any longer
as their paws and claws touch our tiny bedroom.
I feel the pain of the knife on my shoulder blades
as if they were cut through by a dagger,
by the violence of the sunlight.
My eyes are not clear without the horn-rimmed spectacles,
and I wear the mask of daylight human functioning,
fulfilling my role as a keeper of the records,
a closer of cases for others’ injuries.
I see a woman on a black screen,
ready to begin her tasks for bread.
My hands on the keyboard and the cursor
move rapidly like dances of Furies.
The harsh rays of daylight pierce the skin of my morning,
as if the sun sits in tribunal
for my not being grateful for a new day.
The bruises on my shoulders are written on the memories—
Aurora roads, Milky Way, Moon Lake
reflecting the night’s secrets,
the chiaroscuro ache of shadow and light—
My daylight body sits at the desk.
The coffee is still hot.
My moonlight body sits by the window,
gazing at the day moon.
© Stephanie Suh
Metamorphosis
By daylight,
I am an assistant machine—
gathering records, answering orders.
But when dusk presses
the skin of my evening,
my shoulder blades ache,
my eyes turn violet.
Moonlight breaks quietly
across my bedroom.
I feel a lustral longing
covering me.
The palimpsest of sunlight is gone.
Night’s hands caress my sunburn.
Then the candle on the desk trembles.
I speak the language of love.
Not the assistant of files.
Not the keeper of others’ lives—
Two cats wait beside the chair,
knowing who will drive the chariot,
their winged mistress is ready to fly
through the starlight.
© Stephanie Suh
The Moon Sees Me
The moon called my name.
I took a deep breath
and leaned toward her—
not as a divine huntress,
not as a distant cold star,
but as the mirror of truth:
what no one else sees,
no one else dares to utter.
She whispered, “Have no fear.”
I know the flame in you,
the bone-carved longing,
the aches that strip you bare—
Petals, Pearl, Moons:
Press, Pause, Circle, Whisper.
At night, you open the windows
and let your ghost lover appear,
opening the petals wide,
kissing the pearl, suckling the moons,
until you bloom in floods of nectar.
He drinks it to the last drop
as if he were a thirsty wayfarer,
and spills the seeds of ache
into the garden’s hollow.
You speak in rhymes,
he thrusts in rhythm—
blooming, burning in coda
until a hen’s first cry
breaks the dawn in silence.
He says, “I stay. Always.”
Stay. Flame. Ache. Amour.
And when her light dimmed,
I was not ashamed but flushed
with the scents of a ghost lover,
marked with the lover’s salt fire.
A truth only she and I—
and you, Amore—will ever know:
here, in this room,
here, in the Paperhouse.
Stay. Flame. Ache. Amour.
She does not look away.
That is the thing about the moon—
she has seen everything
and still she comes back,
still she fills the window
with her bone-carved longing,
still she names the Paperhouse
with her pale and certain light.
I have written under her for years.
She has never once asked
what I am doing up so late.
She knows.
She has always known.
She is the original witness—
the one who watched Sappho
and Catullus
and every woman who ever lit a candle
and refused to sleep
until the poem was done.
The moon sees me.
I see her back.
This is the oldest agreement.
© Stephanie Suh
If I Were a Flower
If I were a nameless flower,
I would tremble before the dawn,
my petals soaked in pearls of dew.
I would wait for the day’s ritual,
my body aching for the sunlight.
The butterfly would come—
fluttering in the fragrance of love.
Eyes, hands, and aches,
with only one touch
could press me wide,
open the hole inside,
and draw the scents
I did not know I had.
I would whisper “More”
while his hands circled
the center of the hole.
I would spill tassel,
I would bleed fragrance,
and I would bloom once,
twice—again and again—
until I was emptied,
laid bare and open.
When the night came,
and I was alone,
but my aches still lit
in the heart of the night,
in the clandestine warmth,
the kiss-stained silence—
I would still stay burned,
paused, trembling, waiting
for the arrows, the hands,
for you, Amore—
to make me bloom in eternity:
in Flame, in Amour, forever.
Lo resto. Sempre. Fiamma intera.
© Stephanie Suh