ALEXIS LEE
cw – references to drowning, references to abuse/violence
fortysevensixtyfour
i.
cup your hands around your ear / listen for home / wait for the echoing volley / when you dream / do you press your hand against the never-night sky / and believe it is yours to mould / because i cremated desire / before it could trip off my tongue / like sin / like hope / the undead responsibilities we fail to keep in this eternal summer / to survive enough so our silence doesn’t scream / but to die enough to call the ghost town home
ii.
banged the gavel / too much hell but we can fix you civilise you purify you / scalpeled us into purgatory / razed down the tears either i cried or they robbed me of one more time / and i unlearned the difference between please may i borrow and this was always mine / so home and i / run inverse to each other / like dead currents / like water in my palms / like my father’s father’s father where one never knew the other / untethered from drowned boats and forgotten tongues
iii.
now / with my hand on / your unshifting ribcage / be honest to me if it’s the first and last time / swear upon the rivers you pressed the heads of your promises into / until they lay quiet, no effervescence / did you leave them under the streetlight / and did you tell them that rotting yellow-gold / was their true north
Alexis Lee is a pseudonym for a person from Hong Kong who writes and photographs. She usually takes ugly emotions and tries to turn them into beautiful things, but when that’s not possible (and it often isn’t), she resorts to being unusually good at Tetris. Her twitter is @lessalexis.