Julia Liu

State Lines

Here again: the fine line between point A and B, road
outstretching horizon into barcode. Near a gas station we drive

past a vulture so starved it cannibalizes itself. We drive past rain,
numbers, bodies but if you want to talk destination there’s not much

else to say. Midnight swallows our car. I say let’s quit—we keep
driving. The blind leading the blind. Our car crashes into the shitty

motel with Free Wi-Fi and Free Hugs With A Set of Hash
Browns, $5.99. We ring the bell. It rang. It rang. An hour later:

me, weeping into off-white wallpaper. You outside
smoking a cigar. Knees careen to the sink, find cicadas

molting each other into renewal. I shed my nails, return to satin
sheets a new kind of ripe. An hour later: you climb in, all

cigarettes and wildfire. Above us, the TV glitching morse code
reprieval. Even in this life I mistake broken things as hands.

When morning swells, we hit the road again, the blind leading
the blind. You open your mouth onto mine—slide gasoline

down my throat. Baby, tell me you dreamed of roadkill. Tell me
this is a car we’re driving. Tell us where we are.

________________________________________________________________________________________

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