Tangqing Zhang
“Light speaks in a language we never learn—yet always understand.”
The Cipher of Light
When the sunset stains the sea,
we become conspirators of light.
The broken waves in your eyes
write fleeting verses
across the glass of the car window.
The wind turns the leftover warmth into silk,
gently wrapping the lines, we never spoke.
In this narrow,
moving chamber,
even our breath carries
the weighted sweetness of its own.
As dusk begins to dissolve the coastline,
we gather the fragments of light.
On the blackened pane,
two silhouettes slowly surface—
drawn,
closer,
still.
Author’s Note:
This poem was inspired by a fleeting scene on a coastal road at dusk—a car window framing the ocean as the sunset turned the water into molten gold. The title evokes both a literal moment and a lyrical state of mind, where light becomes a private language shared between two people.
The imagery draws on traditional Chinese culture, where nature is never a backdrop but a mirror of intimacy. “The Cipher of Light” suggests an unspoken code—one that exists in glances, in the silk-like warmth carried by the wind, in the breath-heavy air of a confined space. The final image of two silhouettes approaching each other captures the slow inevitability of closeness, suspended in a frame of glass and shadow.