Julia Liu

Daybreak

Consider this: we were the prey
before the hunted. Even now you wouldn’t

believe it—ground tainted slick with dust, rusty
breeze coaxing all the shutters open. Humidity swells

in our throats like a prayer & what’s new?
Summer & all I want is forgiveness. Before

the destruction I pressed every clover in our
garden onto wax paper, wiped blood off

my mosquito bite, juiced kale leaves
into something like trying. Forgot the destination

& beginning all at once & now what? Nowadays we
count things in fractions: Roads breaking miles into ¾

bodies. War the only whole—how tenderness licks
rot into flesh. & yet. What’s left: headwaters thinning

out like an exit, razing brick tiles into submission.
Everything I loved an absence. In the next state over,

over, over: immolation against everything, immolation
hereditary. If nothing else, then, please—know flight as fight.

We undress our wilt & your remains are still
limp against mine. So much of this life given & giving.

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Julia Liu is a writer from New England. An American Voices Medalist and Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate finalist, she has received recognition from the National YoungArts Foundation, Pulitzer Center and Interlochen Center for the Arts, among others. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Gone Lawn, Eunoia Review and elsewhere. When not creating, she loves whisking matcha, analyzing films and collecting too many Smiskis. Find her on Twitter/Instagram @byjulialiu