turning

Belina Chong, Taiwan

drawing into my lungs the sedative
of a thickening december gloom,
I consider the pale knifepoint of stars,
realms aglow with the grace of deity
in imaginations long-evanesced
these borrowed skies, too, seem to wear
the ghostly streak of his last words—
cold asteroids a long time coming,
striking hard enough to burn
how human it is to yearn half your life
for the obscure and untouchable,
only to find your smoldering atoms
tossed in their midst at last—
no longer capable of feeling, leaving only
memory, blooming sky-wide as an ash tree?

history has a way of catching us
unawares, this charred, quivering creature
who burrows out of churning nebulae
and plutonic depths, your pupal skin
paper-thin in her briared clutches
how swift the selvage of a
millennium’s contrivance unravels
as stars wheel, scatter, and burst—
us witnesses fated eons ago—
into still more stars, encircled by life anew
time and again we meet the exquisite ruin
of fire and brimstone,
batten our vessel against each scalding tide,
trusting our battered wind rose
to point the true course—
into the white glare of the sun

first light tips, crisp and
swirling, into breathless spring
the lightning shuttle of a honey bee
crisscrosses thresholds of calyces
dew-wreathed, her gold-splattered body
diving into each ultraviolet flare
with daggerlike fealty, weaving
constellations of life-giving dust
her flight shall outlast many
a brother and sister never known,
outlasted still by the pyretic majesty
of her hive, her planet, her galaxy—
fireworks hurtling toward a singular dark horizon
if those five gleaming eyes could divine
all four dimensions of spacetime,
would she ever wish for
a different narrative than this?

long have I chased a sepia romance
in the undertow of miles and years
poetry of lovers gone, comets far-flung,
old flames long quelled by salt
beneath this rising snow moon
I am reborn, a lupine superbloom
sowing twinkling magpie hopes
into night’s unsuspecting bosom
time defies all eventualities but one
no whim of the cosmos anticipated
the ripple of your sunlight laugh,
the quickening flutter that caught
in my blue cinder heart
new asterisms take shape
as we walk the pine-strewn avenues,
constellating into mythoi yet unsung
naught must be set in stone,
should this pearl-stringed bud grow
to brace the staves of our voyage
on to prima materia—
perhaps, in beholding our brief florescence,
the stars will dream us back to life eternal

Belina is a Taiwanese sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an ecology student, she enjoys taking long wandering strolls in nature as well as writing poetry inspired by nature and mythology. You may also catch her belting out songs whenever she thinks herself alone.