Leqi (Angela) Xiao

Corvid

The bird-mouth opens—
not to speak but to hold.
What it carries: a blue-

glass button, a child's
milk tooth, the particular
silver of a lie you told

and kept telling.

You build your nest
from what reflects—
foil, mirror-shard, the black

water of a phone screen
at 3 AM. Each object
chosen for its weight

in the beak, its ability
to make you visible
to yourself.

Your shadow on snow:
a hole where light
learned to be hungry.

You fill it with anything
shiny, anything that says
I was here

before the here
moves on.

Spring. The others
pair off, build
with twig and mud,

with the plain
grammar of continuing.
You stay. You arrange

your collection
in the sun, watch
the blue glass

throw its color
against the bark—
a small, false

sky you made,
a weather
that needs you

to exist.

The tooth goes back
to the earth.
The button, you

swallow. The mirror
you break
against your own

hard head,
and the pieces
fly up, become

a kind of flight,
a scattering
that looks,

from far away,
like arrival.

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Leqi (Angela) Xiao is a student and writer from B.C. Lower Mainland, Canada. Angela’s poems have appeared in the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, Poetry Pause and Polar Expressions.