Aileen

after Catherine Pond

The last day, our mouths pearly with spit, we feign
God through rose petals & sticks.

It’s August now. Hovering sun, boundless sky. Fireflies
reviving into lanterns. Street lamps

pour lemon light over the shadowed
sidewalks. Past eight, stars hum their mantra,

rhythmic as cicadas. We are
sitting in my mother’s garden: a dozen

rose bushes, two old shovels, a bicycle
asleep with rust, fifty-something footprints

mapping constellations of soil. You pluck
rose bushes, fingers kissing buds the way

our mothers kiss our foreheads—soft
& unpretentious. Mostly we boy-gossip, the air heavier

than our laughter, diaphanous as the silk dress
my mother stores in her closet—never-touched, waiting

for my body. Left hand full of rose petals, right hand
brushing the petals

ruffling our skirts. Hummingbirds glowing
in our chests as a roly-poly curls its body

underneath a makeshift house of roses. You try
to invent reality. But this time, I see it

for what it really is: you still want
to be God. I still want to be

human. It’s still the world, says my voice. Nothing
is ever real. I know it’s true. The flush

of summer grips our skin like the pink chalk
we used to sketch hopscotch courts, still bathing

in moonlight: sticking. Stuck.

Evelyn Liu is a poet from North Carolina, where she is currently an undergraduate student studying philosophy and engineering.