Lucerna

By AMY ZHANG

At the close of the whaling hour he led her like moonlight to
water. The season brittle in their fingers, her stolen ring beneath

the sleeve of a borrowed coat. Music still dripping from her smallest bones,
she made a parenthetical with her body and crushed the dark between them

like cheap silk. He reached into her and the minute hand turned home.
He stilled. She stilled. Their lungs like wingbeats. He painted

on her skin with foreshadow. Gooseflesh. The sound of a lighter on
the last dreg of fluid. Here the apple never fell and she held

his second smallest finger between her teeth and led him
into the past with nothing between them but a shoelace

wound around their necks. The night seeped through. He traded
gravity for a slip of time. Another hour. Another day. Sister mine,

show me how Penelope built her bed and slept alone. Tell me why
mountains are deeper in their reflections & why water will not fit

in my palm. Take me home like wind through a doorframe and let
the birds in my body find a way out from beneath their feathers.