The sky waits to be cleaved
like a tongue against a railing.
You scratch the paper walls,
wings aching for warmth.
Sirens slice through this photograph.
The slivers of wood on the windowsill
cleared of snow. I can imagine your talons
there, parsing, calculating. Your heart
a ripped parachute, trying to billow
in an abandoned lot. Sweet diagram of skin,
muscle, bone. You’ve flown for too long, sang
for too long into the echoless air.
It’s migration season, as in the stopgap
yearning for something more. Thirty floors
down, the ants buzz in the plaza.
The morning shudders through your belly
and I breathe chalk and feathers, too.
Emma Miao is a 15-year-old Chinese-Canadian poet from Vancouver, BC. Her poems appear in Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and The Emerson Review. She is a commended Foyle Young Poet, and her spoken word + piano album, Oscillation, is forthcoming this winter. She loves watching sunsets and listening to the waves. Tweet her @emmaamiao.
