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

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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Poetry

By mooncakes

D O M I N U S V O B I S C U M

slide the depths of your voice from the dust-lungs of your body,
spirit fluttering iridescent ivory feathers into the ianthine arteries of your heart.
breathe and you etch a cross onto your subconscious, glowing like

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