Tim Tim Cheng

Sparty in October

It’s great the music sucks. We stay alert enough to salvage disused plastic cups. In the packed thermo bath, beach bods and dad bods are equal. Only heads are above the water in the chilly air. We must be happy now. Ignore how money makes money. The trees are flashing. Dancers dancing as animals as deconstructed disco balls. Lasers printing mid-air membranes before the castle. You tell me you are about to piss, thoroughly massaged by the thermo streams. I grope for the small stream running from you into the human broth. It must be a form of acceptance. How we buoy and wave and kiss in the pool, processing how I piss into my boots in the changing room. Bottled water is saved from the security but at what cost. No one should watch this prison of a partner break down into a four-year-old. We leave before the sparty is over. Doggy in the changing room. I don’t think you could love me more. 

Tim Tim Cheng is the author of The Tattoo Collector (Nine Arches Press, 2024) and Tapping At Glass (Verve, 2023). She co-edited Where Else: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology (Verve, 2023). Born in Hong Kong, she is based in Glasgow. timtimcheng.com