Stephanie Chang

Alpenglow

Moon-fed, dirty. The cabin quivering on a lip
of lake. The lake of your sleep on my right
shoulder. It is always an occasion. Like nothing else
Old World sparrows rummage the night
as quickly as your face slackens, falls to my lap.
Meanwhile the reeds. When the red curtains part
ways, bugs rise like steamed buns, the night
thrust underwater. Who will I trust?
This is how I know. I need a mouth. One
preened of secrets, blank as blank, open
shut case. I should want that world: to walk
blind-folded, unmoored, soft leather step.
So as not to wake the October sun, I don’t
look up; I move in with you, not away.
The window-cathedral of your many eyes
casting a net over the land. The stonecrops
and ferns bent so that no time spills out.
It smelled so still I could no longer breathe
the daylilies, and then, some days entirely.
In time, I woke to the sound of the lake hitting
the ceiling of the sky, frustrated, desperately
hurting to live, to be witness to the world
where it doesn’t.

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Stephanie Chang (she/they) is a Sino-Canadian writer and tarot reader based in New York City. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Kenyon Review, Waxwing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and Sixth Finch, among others. She holds a B.A. in Art History and English with Creative Writing from Kenyon College.