by Grace Liang
as she sets to leave, her footsteps flutter
like the final beats of a broken wing
and a confession scales its way up my throat;
i tell her of the number of slate-grey mornings
i had spent in prayer, offering the bruises
on my knees for a promise of her return;
i tell her how geese, every autumn, scratch
the same path southward with their wings,
not knowing if they would be among the ones
returning or the ones replaced on the homestretch
by strangers while their brethren ache;
i tell her that the moment her steps fade,
i would tear apart every sky to find an echo
of her voice, sift through every worn road
for a trace of her stride, because the only goodbyes
i have witnessed are dives into into murky water,
so quick that oblivion himself can only seethe,
where one emerges either a husk or not at all;
but when she folds her hands over my wrists,
the hum of her pulse mirrors mine, the way
the tides trace the moon’s caress over the shore
to suffuse the sand with gleaming light;
my fears evaporate into the evening
air as I exhale, to her, a soft goodbye
Grace Y. Liang is a writer from Ontario. Her work has been featured in Overachiever Magazine, the Blue Marble Review, the Aurora Journal, and more. She has been recognized by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. Grace is on Twitter at @grace1sonl1ne.
Emerge Literary Journal 