Isabel 玥 Li
palm reader
you were always better
at eye contact. when i looked in
your pupils the first time
i saw semicolons and you
did nothing to correct me.
this is my life line, i took
the point of your index finger
through my hand like a kitchen knife,
like good morning, dear,
like your earl grey, your bread and butter,
imagining us prettier as a
husband and his wife.
now, was that the truth or
just your tongue running along
your teeth twice over?
running your mouth into
a deep smile to please me.
ironquick,
matchstick red
like scarred palm pacts of men
who only believe in love
after tasting blood
for themselves.
you said it was,
your pleasure.
do i have to remind you,
i am not a man. unlike you
my mouth is a holier thing than
the hunt for what feels good.
was that my memory or
just my heels digging into the
grooves; won’t you at least dance,
my lover? were we destined to be
just a trick of the light,
a neuron fired, false start,
poor thing who never makes it
to the finish line.
the difference between
a memory and regret,
i’ve learned,
is if the fire begins
to look like ash.
i remember asphalt, tyres
screaming us down
the wrong side of the road,
something bigger than my fear
already climbing out my
mouth to forgive you.
when my tears are wiped
we bump teeth across the console:
a clatter of hangers, a newly
emptied room.
out of your rear view,
the sea spelled out splintered glass.
i remember thinking, now,
what could that possibly mean?
i’ve rolled that night under
my tongue, over my molars,
until it wouldn’t bleed.
until lying could,
like loving did,
come naturally.
a mother’s nature
touchdown, through
the birdsong gates,
amnesiac air.
quarried feet,
the simple shames
of slinking into
old skin.
loading my weight
into backseat grey
of a stranger’s cigarette
smoke shaped nothing
like the curving face
we share.
i’ll starve myself
of the sea, become
slim as rain, as sleet
slick enough to slip behind
the shiny streets after
the storm. forbid myself
from highland park to
eastern beach and try
make myself at home
in a stranger’s airbnb.
but you were pruning
the garden today
in preparation for
spring, my birthday.
you, clouded in your
sun-hot wide brim,
turned to lisa
and asked
if i was back in town.
her face, ghost
white enough to lie.
i wonder if the
earthworms told you
as soon as i hit the ground.
just a whisper in your
untender palms,
brushing aside
spider’s silk, browned ferns,
a lineage yet to slowly unfurl
the freaks of nature we call
mother and child.
Isabel 玥 Li writes when they can't tell the difference between head and heart. Their work appears in The Seventh Wave, a fine line, bad apple, Re-Draft, Sine Theta, and others. They laugh easily.