 | The Rising Phoenix Review January 24 | Yellow Fever mother never warned me about people like you:
mouth soft with honeysuckle breath,
pollen-tinged,
your air sweet like a
bruise.
i knew your voice before i heard it,
an aching elegy, story that remembers its own ending.
and you knew i was raw
with want. knew how to undo a
tender wound.
but even then, through the haze of dusk and glow i saw
the way your eyes leered towards
bodies so carefully golden, their pupils like
burning night.
and i saw the way light trickled down your knuckles,
the mount of your jaw clasping so easily.
to become disposable is to render yourself to
loss.
it was a calculated mistake.
i watched as the skeleton of our pretense imploded
into calcium bone and splintered rib-cage,
made a home out of the disaster.
'another yellow girl,' they said. shaking their heads
as a fragile apology.
homage to every woman coveted for their silence,
those with ghoul hair and cherry pits for eyes.
you hungered systematically, clinically,
the way a white man draws straws over soiled corpses.
i know a motive when i see it.
when the sun rose on the fifth night,
you feigned desperation, reached for my hand without
believing in the motion.
i didn't either. told you so and aimed for the sternum.
so
when you left me under the sky,
night fresh with anger and teeming with soot,
i did not weep. By Esther Lee Biography: Esther Lee is a writer and high school student from Southern California who also has a penchant for photography, tea, and the nineties cartoon Daria. She's a contributor for the online zine Soliloquie, and her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and published by Rookie Magazine. | | | |
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