swallow me in fluorescence

Elizabeth Li

join streetlights like constellations; stitch jewels into this city
shanghai: breathe once & fill your lungs with incandescence and dreams. breathe

twice & realize: you are already filled with smog. it is far too late to be anything else. yet still we go on
breathing. twilight simmers lightly against my cheeks; shanghai kisses me

with ash-caked lips & the reflective glare of billboards on pavement
outdazzles the moon. starving & hollow: i weave & flutter through

a roaring crowd, chasing the next shot of brilliance, the next dash of color. city iridescence whirls
around me, kaleidoscopic, & i ride the lights on translucent wings, begging someone

to light fireworks inside me, so tired of pale moonlight, the flicker of a watercolor dream,
hungry like the millions in this city – fireflies gobbling at the insubstantial dark, so i

wait in line for a skewer of inflatable honey.
“a rooster for you, lovely lady,” declares the shop owner at my turn. places honey at his lips &

breathes. molten gold swells in his hands, hands that twist a head & feathered tail from
shapeless form; just another mortal deity in this city granting common miracles for

filthy coin. i feel myself swell taut with the rooster, all seething static nothingness inside &
i stare & i stare & take the skewer, that’ll be 40 yuan: it shatters to stardust beneath my teeth, the

shards melting thick sweetness onto my tongue. i close my mouth around it,
pretend it tastes like sunlight, pretend it’s smoothed me over inside &

swallow. i tell myself: maybe it’s okay to create nothing from nothing, to fill myself with emptiness
so i close my eyes, melt gold behind my teeth & i breathe & i breathe...

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Elizabeth Li is a high school junior currently living in Canada. When she's not writing, she enjoys binging musicals, reading webtoons, and trying to figure out how to knit.

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