Sui Wang

On the way to my father’s funeral I see northern lights

like shimmering bruises on a black eye.
To apologize, gush a gentle glow.
Tell me how we are never going to forgive each other—
dim or bright, a wound naming itself twice.
His watch coils an empty wrist, counting away
my childhood. I think of him as headlights
humming by, the flickering shadow retching
itself all over the wall, before swallowing itself back.
Nights thin as eyelids, under which
dream chases itself into its second life: 
my wet exit and your butterfly.
Time sews the sky to the earth,
each star a stitch undone by dawn. We carry
the hearse in our throats, its weight a whispered verse.
Riding together we clasp fingers to sync fear,
our shadows merging, two ghosts in flight—
I grip your memory like you once held my small hand.

Sui Wang is a poet, fiction writer, and social science researcher living bicoastally. She is a third-year PhD student in Communication at University of Southern California. She currently resides in New York, where she is guided by emotional traffic and poetic architectures. Her literary work has appeared or are forthcoming in Aloka Magazine, wildscape lit journal, and Meniscus Journal.