Q. LUI
your father calls you 小飛俠
so you keep a kiss wrapped around your fingertips,
another strung over your sternum. anywhere
except by your mouth. pearl-teeth sink
into their own shadows, remind you
little girls don’t get to never grow up, far too clever
to fall out of their carriages. it makes sense, then,
why you only ever managed to disappear
halfway. why you always got stuck
in the starscape, landed back in your dollhouse bed
by morning. the lock outside your window
wasn’t there before. the tide still reaches for your skin
despite past promises of flight. when you’re older
someone you thought you were supposed to love
will strive sure-footed through a forest,
shoot two birds out of the sky before slipping
from your sight. and when you look down at your hands
they’ll be sprouting feathers.
your father calls you 小王子
so you tie the passing gulls to your wrist
and let them pull you into the sky. stop in the street
to talk to roses, cutting off the voice of every bloom
to tell them they’ll never matter quite as much
as what you’ve already chosen.
sun-heat on your shoulders is both your only tether
and the snake coiled around it, fangs poised
to pierce through, to hook into the side of your throat
and reel you in. all it wants is your pulse draped
around its neck, all python-slow languor. there are
worse things to ask for. worse ways to be useful. this
only means waiting until the space between you forgets
that it was ever there. you’ve never been brave enough
to do the work of being left behind.
Previously published in The Hellebore
Q. Lui is a Chinese-Canadian chronic procrastinator who has been described as 1) dedicated to being a menace and 2) mostly made up of bees. Their work has appeared in Kissing Dynamite, The Hellebore, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere, and their micro-chapbook Nemesis Contract is forthcoming from Ghost City Press in July 2021. You can find them @flowercryptid on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.