Laojia Wedding

Hills like she’d never seen before
Cream-colored,
                        cars,
Juicy taffeta,
                    mother’s pot boiling the
Sounds of dumplings breaking
                               or earning
            open in the yellow winters.
Groom was in an office shirt.
            open at the pants.
He looks like someone passed him
                                                       over
            for last month’s lay            off

Last month:
                    She braided her hands
                    between seasons
                    mother’s ruby earrings
                    her own whispered vows
They see you.
                    At the altar she smiles
                    with lips of added lashes
                    addled fingers knotted
                    clammy between them.

Downtown

The other day, I saw my old self drifting
down the street. As usual, she was looking
for something concrete and clear—adamant
about destination, ambivalent about process—
crossing the road wearing only her convictions.
For a moment, I couldn’t remember how it felt
to be her. Why she liked the songs she did. Why
she said the night air felt like fabric. Because

everything is losing color these days. Once I was
a child in the Pacific Northwest, where a pinecone
or a library book felt like a celebration, could startle
me awake. Once everyone was a child in a forest.

Lavinia Liang is a writer and an attorney. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, TIME, the Los Angeles Review of Books, AGNI, and elsewhere.