Von Aegir Literary
on remembering
MJ LUONG
a touch is a touch until it spider-webs like twilight
beneath your skin, which is a mouth,
sewn shut and cavernous until it presses
unbidden against a tongue,
which is a tongue until it learns
to trace your ear, which is not
an ear, but a cracked vessel filling
with dandelion wishes,
draining until you've forgotten
the sound of a sigh,
a stain breeding –
to lie is to be the pearl,
to want is to be the flesh left behind,
which is to say
you are an armored corpse, choking
beneath walls of ashen black, hands lit
in a funeral pyre for the day you forgot
how to exhale the well water from your lungs
beneath your skin, which is a mouth,
sewn shut and cavernous until it presses
unbidden against a tongue,
which is a tongue until it learns
to trace your ear, which is not
an ear, but a cracked vessel filling
with dandelion wishes,
draining until you've forgotten
the sound of a sigh,
a stain breeding –
to lie is to be the pearl,
to want is to be the flesh left behind,
which is to say
you are an armored corpse, choking
beneath walls of ashen black, hands lit
in a funeral pyre for the day you forgot
how to exhale the well water from your lungs
MJ Luong is a North Carolina native with her head stuck in the clouds more often than it should be. She can often be found taking aimlessly long walks around town, especially during the fall.
