Supernova Vacuumed

for Laura

No – you are not the type of girl
to explode-boom-balloon burst
dynamite, or sear
nuclear fire. You

are not the flames that lick
at mercury-heels, the coal
pumped, smoke furnaces
click-clacking engines, not

the gnashing xylophone teeth, the
dancing bones, nor the headstone
haunting, nor the bull bucking
kick-smash-killing–

No. You are not kinetic. You are immobile
to the observer four seats away, but you
rattle– the glass of cherry pop that
wet-wobbly-circles the tabletop,

a humming to a
deep rumble underfoot. No –
you are not a lingering mushroom cloud, not
the boom, but the sizzle of soda

not the mourning fog, but
the mist of sputtering bubbles. At the bodily
level, you still like liquid. But you
spotty-laugh, you shifty, lifty

toes, you dance-fingertips, you
eyelid-vibrate hummingbird quick – on a
microcellular level you buzz, you butterfly, you
synapse-spark, you nerve-arrow, you are

a time lapse, a fast-forward field
unsheath-bud-bloom-dy-ing in four snaps, the
lava spew-hardening, the fish-to-lizard-
to-crawler-to-ape-to-poet catalyzed, Pangea

power-hammered-split like a cracker,
segregation under thirty seconds, week into day, Creation
crammed, Big Bang vacuumed into the
popping steam of carbon. You are potent –

potential.

By Meimei Xu

Biography:

Meimei Xu is a junior at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, GA. She is a recipient of a 2018 National Gold Medal for Journalism from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, and her nonfiction and poetry will move onto national judging this year. Her work has also been recognized by the Library of Congress. She currently works as a content writer for the Adroit Journal and has attended the 2018 Kenyon Review Young Writer’s Workshop.