I found you again last night.
Stumbled over you like a body
in the woods, your eyes no longer windowed
and your limbs anything
out of a menagerie: shot dog, beached seal,
bat growing flightless, membranes
made moss. Made missing. But your jaw
still in the shape of something human.
Here, you softened like you never did
in my memories. Here, the only danger
was the light through trees, silver blade buried
between ribs. I wanted to plant an acorn
six feet below your spine, to separate
vertebrae. Crack sternum
like chestnut. Like I hadn’t done enough.
Miranda Sun is nineteen years old. An alumna of the NYS Summer Young Writers Institute and the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, as well as published in TRACK//FOUR, The Claremont Review, Sobotka, Body Without Organs, YARN, and more. She loves aquariums and bubble tea.
Twitter: @heregoesthesun
Facebook: Miranda Sun