Aubade

by Khaty Xiong 

By morning, the myth finally faded.

Whole oceans reduced to a single drop.

Lamenting throughout the landscape,

caverns and canyons, blisters of islands

seething in natal forms. The earth cornered

in every rock. By memory, the lowland deer

emerging from their graves in an attempt

to graze. Slow and thirsty, they drink

unnoticed in these fields. Their mossy flanks

dribbling with precious dew. What else

was there to do? I covered my mouth 

and bowed deeply.

In grief there is also desire—

a shiny arrow void of all purpose. My life

a paradisal canvas bursting with spells

and sores of the gilded tongue. Meteoric,

blood aglow, my shadow parting through

my bones. And for a time, everything

living for too long and not long enough.

My mother, who died quickly, tossed

hastily into the wind. My despair tumored 

and blooming, oneirically untraceable.

Beyond desire, the accursed dreams—

birds mending borderlands, beasts felling

stars, eternal life in the eye of the garden.

Upon the tides, the celestial idyll betrayed

by dark. Such is the will of a seeded colony,

the devoured home sailing into absurdity

without guide or glossary. Needletails

sending off into the sky in lieu of sacrifice.

Were I to wake from this, I would miss

my mother turning away from me, spring

inflorescent, the isle of dawn breaking 

over my left middle knuckle.