Let Me Be Moss
Dear earth, let me be moss in your woods.
Let me be a life that encroaches in
your dark
and trace your skin with no roots that you gave me.
True apothecary, let us share this poison.
A footprint doesn’t lift but it sinks
and our breaths go where our bones go.
What if I become your marrow
if you cannot remember why you want to forgive me?
And if I don’t want you to,
please,
let me be a moss that walks to decorate
my graveyard, and make sure you let me go first.
For you cannot be gone before I find north
and fall off the opposite edge.
By Celine Qin
Biography
Celine Qin, an emerging Chinese-Californian poet drifting between Sacramento and the Sierra Nevadas, writes as not only a person, but people. Navigating what she calls a parceled girlhood, Qin forges, sobs, and breathes for the women who have taught her the resilience in watching things happen, and among their parcels she discovers her own revelating agency. She is also a grassroots organizer, enjoyer of music, and a lover of all things anyone can find beautiful, which, to her especially, means Ponderosa pine trees.