By Stephanie Choi

Featured Art: Scarlet by Joseph Taylor

               You crave
For the wheels to ride across the puddle, muddied
With pebbles & all your past lives too

               You want to find again
That sky blue that’s been shut tight
All winter long

               You don’t know why
When you finally do
The birds mistake each strand of your hair for a branch

               You wish for the pecking to stop
And for the stillness of a bud before blossom
To return to you

               You ask for a taste
Of the warm cold wind on your wet lips
Just once more—

               You try to remember
What everything was like before
But you take a sip from the cup filled with dust
               & ash,     instead

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Stephanie Choi’s work can be found in Breakwater Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, ENTROPY, and elsewhere. She highly recommends you try drizzling tahini over ice cream.

Originally appeared in NOR 29