by Sydney Ling
everything moves towards a mess.
i called for rain & received
a flood. shut all the yellow doors,
left the cracked-in ceramic
frog outside, that choked
on smoke when the hills burned
black. tonight, i will play
piano in the basement. billie holiday
on the damp days. i’ve spilt the last
of the brown sugar, trailed an arrow
towards the refrigerator door. mandarin peels dried
on the desk. sunflower seeds litter
the carpet. at dinner,
i knock down a wine glass
blood red stains over my mother’s
white walls
broken glass hangnails clementine skin stuck under moons
freshly washed whites, left unfolded in heaving hampers
i thumb wrinkled music sheets
& the red nail polish scratched on the G3 key.
my piano teacher once asked,
can you play a love song if
you’ve never been in love?
like the patch in the basement ceiling,
i leak. pouring, pooling, letting myself surge
until i drift in the wreckage
shoreless unmoored odyssey beating against the current
always calling the calm to carry me home
drew myself a lukewarm bath before the
storm seeped through the sandbags
and drowned out the notes.
the day the world flooded the music sank with it too.
i couldn’t cry so i clung
to hollowed driftwood & the too-cold moon. when i woke,
the water had washed away everything i knew.
i stepped through the lemon-painted front door
the air smelled like pennies & the lily pad of
the glazed frog cupped the draining seconds.
whistled cold coffee through my yellowed teeth
as the world softened & fell apart.
nothing left to waste.
looked up at the sky’s open mouth break
into song
and watched it fall
Sydney Ling is the founding Editor in Chief of Rice & Spice Magazine, a magazine and creative collective by Asian American youth. She was named a 2022 California Arts Scholar in Creative Writing. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins. Find her on Instagram @sydneyliing.
Emerge Literary Journal 