Cadence Chung
Christabel
After Coleridge
I.
The moon shines bright through the window
like a vision in a dream or the wet whites
of a lover’s teeth. The moon shines like a portrait
of a moon. Christabel watches the mica
in her new hairspray swirling in the light.
It’s almost a pearl, like the pearl of her vintage
vanity; the bright shock of a paua shell:
the cut of its teeth underfoot.
II.
Christabel lies in bed and watches videos
of women she pretends she knows. She lies
on her side and in the sidebar searches ASMR
girlfriend roleplay. ASMR best friend roleplay.
ASMR hospital roleplay. ASMR you are an animal
I am taking care of. She wants to be a little
white creature wrapped up in newspaper and
swaddled; morning comes and her earbuds
are tangled around her little lacey throat.
III.
The sticky chariot of the midnight bus
carries her home every second Saturday
from wild night into the sodden hours of morning.
Its blue gleam shades her in a porcelain glow.
Her half-price Natio concealer, two shades
too light, serves her well. Sometimes she thinks
about staying on until the final stop, getting off
at the mouth of the bush. Unsure of what comes
next in this fantasy, she holds her bus card tight
until its edges cut plastic into her palms.
IV .
She doesn’t keep her window open.
She doesn’t open her gate.
V .
Christabel pale-faced maiden peels all
fruits from poems and spends hours
pulling stinging pieces of zest from her nails.
She makes mood boards on Pinterest
of ballerinas, ribs and bows, tiny
Comme de Garçons dresses, size XXS.
She devours her own prettiness like
a charm bracelet and keeps her desire close,
a piano key, to her blithe breathing breast.
The fruit rots sweetly in the compost.
VI.
She imagines that there is someone breathing
next to her when she sleeps. That everyone
she knows is on the other side of the wall
in a long dark room. O, hush her beating heart —
how she never wants them to leave
like a thief in the night, like her cat jumping
over the gate and eating
the thrushes next door.
VII.
The window O filled with paltry moon stays
closed and Christabel nightly fetches the cat
from the neighbour, feeds it sweet nothings as it sleeps
by her feet, and there’s always a moment silvery-slit
when it looks like you won’t bleed at all. She tips her
head and hopes someone might see
the way her hair streams down her back, arched,
holding Beauty in her seeping skin like a claw sheath
stuck to the carpet; like a shell stuck in skin.
VIII.
Christabel O pale-faced maiden loves that she scraped
her thigh getting out of a car too fast
in a mini-skirt. She touches it like a sacred thing.
It forms around her razor bumps in a series of
dark red dots. Tiny cherries to slowly pull off.
IX.
A small price to pay for such a graze,
for colliding with something taking her
out, out past the woods, into somewhere
she hadn’t even known she wanted.
X.
She hopes that this is how she’ll always hurt.
Cadence Chung is a poet, mezzo-soprano, and composer, currently studying at the New Zealand School of Music. She has released three books: anomalia (Tender Press, 2022), Mythos: An Audio-Visual Anthology of Art by Young New Zealanders (ed.) (Wai-te-Ata Press, 2024), and Mad Diva (Otago University Press, 2025). She also performs as a classical singer, presents on RNZ Concert, and edits Symposia Magazine and the New Zealand Poetry Society's quarterly magazine, a fine line.