because summer rippled through
our wrists like a
disease, speckled and honest.
With breath broken over your
splintered lip, we sipped lemonade to ribbon our
sourness into ribcage, caramelize
fruit into catastrophe. And
chin chin, a Nigerian snack we let
crackle over our tongues,
reminds you of so many
beautiful things:
your mother baptized into
a diamond of water,
its viscosity akin to
tissued egg; and
the moon, a hard
fried thing
pearling porcelain when
left in heat. It
flosses through my gums like
qián, meaning money,
or the body part I wish to
surgery away: flesh just
a vacancy of incisions
plasticizing into a
compostable Mona Lisa.
How lovelorn, how love
lost us teenagers can
be, for I
imagine a chapel tented with
wisteria and origami cranes –
creased wings, a
capricious way to clip
flight – and knife wounds
tweezed out of stained
glass. Under the
pews, Michelangelo’s
David filed into
folklore: a block
of marble
shedding. Your
white dress swanned into a
crescent and the lace
petering into starlight,
I think of how memories
only crystallize if they
mean something. I found
a ring off of Pinterest even though
I didn’t know which one of us would
propose: it doesn’t matter, I suppose,
so long as we both agree to carve out
a gap in our stomachs in the
shape of a prayer. The last
letter of your name
ending in i,
and I, dreaming
in mirrors,
desire.
Illustration by Deborah Han
Josephine Wu
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