Lull

Leqi (Angela) Xiao

Come in. The floor is silt / a satin cool
that keeps the memorandum of each foot.
Come in. Light on the gravel: mica
and minted gold, coins the stream squanders
in its deep pockets. Fish, with mouths
like soft clocks, syllable their names
only to those who've learned the long,
quiet language of the drowned.
Come in. Your lungs / those sponges
pinked with air and panic / pose a question
I have already answered with the dense,
patient grammar of the tide.
Come in. The bridge above: a weathered femur,
a wishbone the sky has been worrying,
trying to snap it for luck.
Come in. On the bank, your mother smudges
to a small, bright pigment. She is waving.
Her grief: a color you have not yet learned to see.
She will dwindle to a thimble, to a pinprick,
to a single grain of salt.
Come in. In half-light, your brother finds your shoe,
lying on its side / a sodden, leathery husk,
its laces tangled with milkweed floss
and the delicate bones of a frog.
Come in. The cold / a hand of basalt and satin,
presses into your palm the cool, black token
of oblivion: a gift that asks only to be spent.
Come in. The bottom is soft / a bed
of velvet mud and the slow, particulate rain
of everything that has ever been.
Come in. Lay on me. Let your weight forget
it was ever separate from the dark.
I will lull you with the slow turn of stones,
with the hush of silt resettling.

Leqi (Angela) Xiao is a 15-year-old writer residing in B.C. Lower Mainland, Canada. Her work has been recognized by the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and Polar Expressions, among others. In her free time, she enjoys podcasts, biology trivia, and Netflix.