​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 writer raised in central Texas. She currently lives in D.C., where she takes long walks to podcasts and misses the family cat. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lumiere Review, Rust + Moth, Eunoia Review, and others.