I enter the Casa Batlló and climb up the whale’s spine. In a dream, I
dissect the ocean with words, and you can’t stand that. I run my knuckles along
the seam on your belly. It holds me like a puddle: the way it scars between a
split world, and I have known both parts. Here, the storm is longer under
trees and the sky can get away with lying. Like anemone, I am spiteful when the
tide runs low. I am in its ribcage now. It is empty, with everything I have written chewed
flavorless. These are things you cannot hear in the ocean, where every syllable echoes
to the same melting glass and what’s left is a faux, stained thing. You keep reminding me
of the rooftop. The tiles, like dragon scales, an armor. No matter how long I look
I can’t see it and you say I must have gone mad. I see a rippled sort of surface, where
what beats beneath is a secret, and only I can choose what is real. The current won’t tell you
what it heard. The bubbles are crackless. We breathe by letting the light in. Living is
floating towards dusk, where rules are swallowed by the water, and we can believe
we are twice as much as we are.
–
Ava Ye/叶曳 is a Chinese writer attending high school in Los Angeles. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the National Council of Teachers of English. Ava is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and her poetry is published or forthcoming in The Penn Review, BreakBread Magazine, and Kissing Dynamite. Aside from writing, Ava is often enjoying iced coffee and waiting for the next rainstorm.