I. Meditation

By Carolyn Cheng ’24

​

Light blinds the boy
playing in a forbidden field where
the grass stabs his legs
he moves his hands to his face. The drone sputters the line
interrupted, somewhere,
a swan dies.
Boy heart rattles out of time,
he does not see twisted
neck broken bodied in the lake. Decembered leaves hang
from the trees, speaking the poppies
into bloom, the boy picks one
for each eye. Prying open
yellowed breeze, his open field is always warm
water invisibled, mouth squeezed dry.
The wasps have left us for
sweeter bodies. Hallelu-