honey-slow afternoon, trickling down my
shooting green veins, venetian canals, in death
fish float belly-up. the physics
of it evades me, eleven, my goldfish
with oxygen pearled in the rainbow swell
of its stomach, an open mouthed victim of some
gaunt house fire rippling through water.
sixteen, I listened for the murmur of asphalt
grated instead of looking for the rasp of tires, cycled,
hands off the bars, wind sweet between my teeth;
inhaling rose petals, the bitterness
cleared my tongue, and I declared it hope.
derivative twists of caterpillar-lips tore through me,
an eyes-closed fatality from sheer vastness.
I used to tap the water with the tip of my
index finger, lopping it off, and in some tongue
it was sustenance, and that stained
glass body would tremble upwards‒
opening its mouth to my fingerprint. f I lie
upside-down, strings pulling every part of me, I could be
scintillating, weightless. just tell me
I don’t need the air.
Elena Ferrari is a junior at Milton Academy and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poetry has been recognized regionally and nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and published in Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and Magus Mabus. When not reading copious amounts of poetry, diving headfirst into physics, and writing just about anything, she can be found annoying her cat and drawing on fogged windows.