I may never be a mother
Thank you mom
Your tongue quells an itch
Right between my ears
Then you walk
As you always do, right?
Out the door
Traces of you are left
In the air
The same air coercing your
Butterfly coercion of the door
Closed and closing by that butterfly touch and
Presumably it shall stay so, closed.
Still standing as if I am gazing
Upon your traces personified
I bid my farewells for what will be the day.
A smile. Tactfully paired with words of the same
I love you sweetie. Have a great day.
My forlorn motherly tongue. I hope you hear it.
I haven’t told you yet
Too quick have you gone
Once more. Once more.
— There is room to confess —
I care for another child
Thinking is her name, and close to my chest she lay.
A closed door
It’ll make a perfect time to tell
— Thinking — my words ill-fit
Of a motherly
Figure like myself
— Perhaps — tasteless as well? Thinking would agree.
Regretfully I am not your mother
This I know.
It is not quite the illogical thought
Though time and time again
— Earnestly — Will I say the words
And watch the door move as it will
The door is a patient revolution
One to pass
Conversing with your traces for a spell
And one for which happily I will undertake
For you
My daughter of ache
Rex Kim
The World – died
After Victoria Chang
The World — died sometime in March 2020 but
we can still feel its heartbeat. There was never
a funeral, only a collective sigh like the way
skin heals over sharp wounds, always thinner
than we want. Recently, the moon has been
turning in circles, a reminder of how we can’t
sleep without a light on anymore, can’t hear
anything above the static of television. The
radios broadcast the growing temptation to
hide in the arms of darkness, where our
restlessness can sneak in and out of velvety
shadows. My own shadow has been stuck to
the floorboards lately, like the husks of hollow
newspapers we step over as if dead animals.
This growing pile of half-used lives competes
with our future. The moon has become a clock
for the dead, and we all must live beneath the
white light. Its arms have yet to pull me under,
though we know they will. The way a hug feels
like the lights turning off
Amelia Dickson
