​Universe in which I mistake the moon for mercy

Even now, to say I want to die feels presumptuous
and incomplete. Like the old tale my mother gave me

of the monkeys who, working hand-in-hand
through the night, try to rescue the fallen moon

they see reflected in a well, not realizing
it was never the moon. At the end of the story

you are meant to learn to scorn the monkeys
for being deceived. But this seems

mistaken. How could I condemn the instinct
to save even that distant, hopeless

shining thing? True, we didn’t get what
we asked for, but who could regret

this palmful of cold, clear light? What I really
wanted was for the birds to stop screaming

through the night, but this too
is an imposition. The claw-tracks

marking the winter frost – do they make
an altar, or flight? I have been alive too long

to not have learned to tell the difference
between a blade

and what it conquers, between body and
betrayal, light and its anticipation. Every

hidden hour I excavate reveals another field
I can’t demine: spring garden

of my unweeded longings, hollow house
once filled with all the rooms filled with

all the things I never knew
I loved, the things I loved before I knew

they were beautiful. Like the fist
of my mother’s voice unclenching

in dreaming, the sound of ghost
without the wound. I raise my hands

like a magician preparing to unwind history
and cut the night into ribbons, carving

through the dark a path to this place,
where the sky won’t stop ringing
​
and every falling thing
sounds like redemption.

---

KJ Li is an LGBT+ Chinese-American raised in central Texas. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she takes long walks and misses the family cat. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Shade Journal, Overheard Lit, The Shore and others—more can be found at https://kjli.carrd.co/.