#merulia

[TEXT ID: lately the garden’s only exhale—

over oaks, birds, and eggs. my Firebush on a cast iron, fourteen other weeds in the pot.

one more boiling over.

i slide the day out with an oven mitt,

take breakfast at a table yellow through. half lidded in the markets since Spring grew through the fences,

a thorn in the eyeing.

a house with its roof on the porch.

sinking land. knotted cordgrass.

living room gnawing the frame.

green curtains on the back window, sunrise weighing the vine. weary ferals cast bones in the glass light and Araceae hides from the street.

s p i l l e d  w a t e r

parted lips, exposed wrists, lidded eyes, and pretty lies; these are the things men like.

a soft silk pillow cushioned carina’s knees from the hardwood floors of their traditional house. mother lounged on an intricate golden chair fitted with crimson-velvet covers and throw pillows; the midnight sky tumbled down her back in thick, soft curls and she ran graceful, thin fingers through the strands, checking for dry ends. her red-painted nails glistened beneath the evening light.

carina bo yok hong is the eldest child of the hong clan. in her father’s eyes, her talent for strategic violence will never eclipse her womanhood. the dragon head title she covets will fall to her incompetent secondborn brother instead while she becomes a wife to a man chosen by her father. but if she cannot choose her future, carina will undermine any attempts to stifle her potential.

d e e p  o c e a n s

“is she blooded?”

he met her heavy gaze. “no one will say.”

out of fear or loyalty? her unasked questions hung in the air like the impenetrable humid summers in the south. wing hong’s eyes glided over the snow-dusted water gardens outside the windows where the fog sat low against the clear pond; a layer of white frost erased all nuances of color—a rebirth in waiting. 

“no one will say,” he repeated.

there is something to be said about suffering as spectacle

how you turned ribs caved in from hunger

into blossoms, blood red and delicate on the tongue

the sweet scent of rot seeping up through roots

rain fell from you and fed the hungry tendrils

‘til they turned to words on the page

exorcised and made beautiful for consumption

never mind the hungry mouths in your memories

hands reaching through metal bars for freedom

you had words to feed you then

and they feed you still