city of lost keychains
Hikari Leilani Miya
i wish the concept of losing anything wasn’t so ancient or infinite
so that every time a mushroom in a graveyard is lost to the weight
of a horribly gray storm everyone falls to their knees and mourns
mycorrhizae. or like when tallahassee starts tasting like ginger
ale that has lost its fizz everyone books flights to san francisco
and inhales salt and sweet right outside the whirl of baggage claim
but here i am with yet another bag (blue with white and black and red
maneki neko) from which dangles a stainless steel ring and chain
with the last link parted like lips about to take their first sip of hot
(not scalding) cocoa. i take it off and replace stainless steel with
more stainless steel, but this one has a soft witch doctor and maybe
if it falls off i can hear the gentle push of plush as it tumbles against
dry grass or bounces off a dangerously jagged curb. and then there are
broken chains pushed awkwardly beneath my mount of blank postcards
(i swear i’ll send one day because the united states postal service works
marvels at delivering my friends sparkly pictures of flowers). i can make
a little abstract pond for my frog figurine with broken chains as steely ripples
in the shape of a lily pad or parts of a curving spine. there’s the planchette
dark and scratched and waiting for new jump rings to connect it to
a chain i can salvage from the happy pink cheeked rice cooker or from
that heavy oh so heavy cornell medallion that put years of iron weight
on my keys and my conscious and my academic transcripts saying i suck.
i’m imagining my pink cowboy hat kirby somewhere in the underworld
where persephone dangles him from a long finger and asks darling what
took you so long to get here? everything circular that wears hats always
finds its way directly beneath tallahassee, where the underworld bustles
with government officials who make bad choices about education and
babies. one day i’ll make my way down there and find my plastic mint
seal keychain beneath the heel of charon and my pokemon slobbered on
by cerberus. i’ll hold up my frog keychain that is growing ever so shorter
but i’ll never give up on. i press the button and the lurid light from its
mouth produces a blink everyone marvels at. mechanical ribbits echo. and
echo.
Hikari Leilani Miya is an LGBTQ Japanese-Filipina American who graduated from Cornell University in 2019 with a BA in English, and from University of San Francisco with an MFA in Creative Writing. She is in Florida State University's PhD program in creative writing. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in dozens of in-print and online magazines across North America, including MacGuffin, Chestnut Review, Eunoia Review, Horse Egg Literary, and Brave Voices. In 2021, she was a semi-finalist for the Red Wheelbarrow poetry prize judged by Mark Doty. Her first book of poems is coming out in 2024 via Cornerstone Press. She currently lives in Tallahassee with her snakes and disabled cat, and worked recently as a behavioral specialist for youth on the spectrum, private tutor, and freelance writer, in addition to earning her master's certification in herpetology from the Amphibian Foundation. She is a percussionist, pianist, and competitive card game player.