Vacancy

After Sarah Lao

Come apocalypse
& I unhook the cosmos From its thin air, stitching
Fish eyes for immortality,
Experimental like burning
Incense to suction vivisection,
A hemisphere for a crown.
How incomplete. How real.
At the end of every movie,
The seats soften into
Clay between the sweat
Of my palms & I hold
The universe hostage
If only for a second,
Enough for Jurrassic
Bones to crack my
Ligaments, & for
The first time I undress
From the skin of my home,
The thistle of my immortality
Replaying the timeline
Of the next life. Inside,
The galaxy bathes in its
Threadless clocks, unwinding
The asymptotes toward
Infinity & how the gods
Heaved at their failed
Birth, an act of pure
Creation lost to myth.
How foolish to believe
That paralysis forced
The inertia of this unbroken
Law, the hint of earth
Scaffolding against its
Mold. It ends in salvation,
Somewhere in the tombstone
Of excavated ocean, so please:
Take these broken dreams
& paint the secret sky.

By Serrina Zou

Biography:

Serrina Zou is a junior at Basis Independent Silicon Valley in San Jose, California and a 2019 California Arts Scholar in Creative Writing. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Just Poetry!!!, the Asian Pacific Fund, In Parentheses Magazine, and the Bay Area Book Festival. When she is not writing poetry, she is either catnapping or avidly devouring novels.