Lim Sambath
THE GARDEN I
I’ve been tending,
To the bonsai I bought ignorantly;
To the small money tree my grandma gave me,
And I hope I can make her proud.
Last year I planted a calamansi seed,
This year it has grown so tall,
And with new heights comes new damage,
And new thorns when you're grown to the wild.
The birds, the butterflies, and the rain.
The cycle of death and destruction.
Then they roam on their ancestors’ nitrogen.
They’re all made of magic and they all have a cause,
And no one may truly know why, but they all do have a purpose.
THE GARDEN II
Either windows that no one can see through,
Or glimpses of a room, only seen once the orange glows.
Sage roofs and pillars auburn, and gray from concrete walls,
Terracotta looks like a void of darkness,
When there’s a backdrop of the summer night sky.
The open doors letting me see inside the shed,
So many stuff in there that could be little phantoms,
And behind it, actual spirits of an old couple.
This period of cold in the midst of daylight’s heat.
Seclusions and shadows are feeding me once more.
THE GARDEN III
Crying in my stomach,
Can't feel the tears on my face.
The people in the hammocks,
Never acknowledges who the guns face,
The white paintings in the attic,
The sharp scars on its face.
What yearns to abduct,
The children or what they’ll face?
Humanities so diluted,
In the pool of golden trinkets.
What is natural about finding heat,
Radiating from battles to stand atop,
Atop the mountains of materialistic power.
Representing the beauty in vulnerability,
And all we can be can be done so easily,
When it's all you’ve known.
Lim Sambath is a sixteen-year-old boy, born and raised in Cambodia, who embraces his given name's reversed cultural ordering. He identifies as gay and found his love for poetry at the age of eight when it became a medium for his emotions. Since then, he has expanded his creative pursuits into various art forms, immersing himself in sources of inspiration as diverse as his English teachers, the earth, divine influences, and artists like Caroline Polachek, AURORA, Mitski, and SOPHIE.
Early in 2024, Lim Sambath began writing a poetry collection titled Shallow Sighted, focusing on the often hidden aspects of people’s lives. With a humble invitation, he offers glimpses of this collection as a collaborative endeavor.