Somewhere, a Lighthouse

In the summer I learn escape is
just another word for sky. A boy
tells me how women are created,
how half do not make it past the
first scavenge, the first teeth. He
licks up the storybooks—their oceans
stringing from his lung in salt-hung
hooks. A woman tells me she would
be my mother, that there is nothing
I have forgotten. There are multiple
ways of mercy; she promises them all:
teeth sharp enough to pull, shadows
the shape of sun, and the sand—how
I could stand and forget, how I, the
hollow, could be obliterated under so
stocky a season’s tongue. In the
summer, I couldn’t look at any mouths.
I made home out of consumption, felt the
stars as skin. My ribs sunk from silt to
water to wish to song. When my arms went
black along the sea, everything had let it
happen. I was my own because no one
wanted me.

By Cindy Xin

Biography:

Cindy Xin is a junior in Albany High School in California who enjoys writing poetry, listening to music, and staring at the sky. Her work is forthcoming in Earth Island Journal, Half Mystic, After The Pause, and Glass.