ASHES AND BIRTHDAY CANDLES

your birthday was halo-lit nights and cigarettes in sugar cakes—

melted icing smeared over the tips of flames snuffed out in the dark.

you asked for a songbird, said your lungs were burnt with apocalypse dust

your lips tainted with the taste of escape from a world with cracked

rose glasses

and i gave you a beating heart but you stared birdlike with all your feathers showing

EYES OPEN

EYES OPEN

EYES OPEN

silver plumes peeking from a spinal cord tall and brittle as a lamppost lit with a singular glowing

bulb

and it was me and you and the smoke and the flame in your head

on your birthday—

mooncakes

VIC

15 years old

Poetry

By mooncakes

17

on the night that you broke your eyes open,
cried into candy packets you found at the petrol station smelling like gasoline and regret
in your still-standing baby teeth like slabs of sugared marble there were

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Poetry

By mooncakes

over/looking/the kid at the front/back of the classroom

your mother/ hacked together skeleton wings into two-part pieces/ bleeding stars, you thought/ neurons fizzing out/ you had all the time in the the universe/ your eyes dripped down/ the back of your spacesuit/ a so-called prodigy ghost/ acid smoke

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Poetry

By mooncakes

the waiting place is a tea store on sunday

中午 At 12:00 pm you walk into the tea store that lies just above the edges of your consciousness, embalm your tongue with the scent of green tea and honey.

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