silhouette of a bird against winter stars
By: Kay Lee
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(“Tonight you’re thinking of cities under crowns of snow, and I stare at you like I’m looking through a window counting birds.” - Richard Siken, Crush) tonight, you’re thinking of cities under crowns of snow, inhaling the cry of the frigid north wind and exhaling frost onto shadowed panes. tonight, i’m looking up at the drooping sky tracing winter stars, pretending that the sky is not forming canis major and minor into two eyes with which to stare down at me, silent as the snowfall that layers without thought. tonight, i look up and count the birds, flying between the sharp angles of the sky, with noses made of skeleton, wings as wide as glass, nonexistent lips, pulled into a teethy grin. i count one, two, three birds streak in blurry black across a hanging sky. three. a magic number, you would say, looking back at me highlighted by the growing depths of the sky, skin bleak and desperate. a train passes, bells ringing something eerie under the silence of the stars, windows blinking searingly bright in the nighttime, and your cheeks are pale, so pale against your eyes, large and unblinking in the midnight. the train fades, into the darkness, leaving behind only the sky, falling to the earth, and the nothing that marks this location, waiting by the station for the trains that never stop. “where do you want to go?” you ask me, smile wide and full of teeth. i cannot answer. i do not know anywhere else. you laugh, throwing your head back into the sky, dripping black onto our shoulders, into the terrible face that the stars make as it leers down at us. you’re thinking of snow. you’re thinking of the next train. you’re thinking of how there is no afterlife, for us. i’m thinking of birds. thinking of counting drowning stars. of how you look like a monster, as you laugh into the abyss, teeth straight and fingers rounded as if you’d killed a man and skinned him alive- worn his body over your own to hide whatever hideous thing you really are. a man, who had stood here before me, under this laughing night and before a laughing man, waiting and waiting for something that would never come. |
(i count one, two, three emotions in your eyes-
none of which could build that smile stretching across your cheeks.) (maybe this is my punishment.
for what, i don't know. all i know is this station, the trains that pass by into the oblivion, and you.) |
Writer's Statement: Kay Lee is a tenth-grader attending Korea International School in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently putting together her writing portfolio and was recently accepted into Juniper's Young Writers Program.