on the first day of my husband’s synthesis, we learned
to plant peonies in the center of his tongue. burial
is the way his fingers twirl in mine, grasping
my palm lines like they are static: breath stops, pauses
like the cricket that sings war songs. here, we were taught
the ways & tricks to morph our vertebraes together,
as if they are the anecdote to the disease growing
on our feet like pesticides preying on swollen
mosquito belly. perhaps first days are meant
to last forever: tallies forgotten on the splintered
verandahs, gate prised open with our raw & bare
palms, dried saliva beneath our throats. marks
that we were here. our bone intertwined, weaved
together like we are only meant to live until our makeshift
fingers learn to fall apart, shattering synthesis &
oxidizing our infirmed breaths like they were never
part of our lungs. & the first day of my husband’s
synthesis, we traded our torn-out bentley for a pair
of dragon wings, dragging across the floor like a sleeve
from a stolen child. & so i learned to cuff my wrists to my eyes
to blind myself. his eyes pasted to the popcorn walls, sockets
unmoving as he begins to synthesize & i begin to ladle
the closed sky as if it would pause, throat spilling
the truths in my lungs like sweetness on his tongue.
Vivian Huang is a sixteen-year-old poet from Irvine, California. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in The Lumiere Review, Paper Crane Journal, Ice Lolly Review, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and elsewhere. She is the Editor-in-Chief at The Cloudscent Journal, and edits for The Lunar Journal and Crossroads Literary Magazine.
Eunoia Review 