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/.