by Yun-Fei Wang
White moths circle the ceiling light, I mistaken their
simmers for rain: voiceless palato-alveolar affricate, you like
huskies and I like you. Special car with extra brakes
in shotgun, the driving instructor assured me
he’d save us from crashing, assured me with eyes forking on
my driver’s-seat legs, and to men like him I smile like
a cracked, ripen lychee, I look like my mother
on the Wednesday she found out I like girls, the day meant
for God’s seed-bearing plants. You grow parsnips and I like
you and I like God. Last night I dreamed I was late to my
funeral, my driving instructor on the brakes with ash in his
mouth, half a year earlier, backseat of a different white car, I let
a woman touch me when she said she’d marry me in
four years. Somewhere in Boylston my mouth
rimmed with red wine, raw salmon on the white, fuzzy carpet of my
best friend’s Newbury dorm. I lay pills out like kibble
for a big dog and I like you and you look nothing like
my mother, who once told me to ask her
if my father has ever been unfaithful, and I bruise another fruit in
my mother’s honor. My friend opens another bottle of white wine
and I think God created us from the same set of
ribs. Butterfly shoulders in Chinese refer to girls so thin their
shoulder bones protrude their backs like wings. The Latin word lux
made both light and Lucifer, I search for your skin on God’s
lamppost, then I search for black moths.
YF Wang studies at Wellesley College. Her poetry can be found in t’ART, Exist Otherwise, and more.