Suckle

Sophia Liu

Mornings, as they exist, pain carried over
from last night. A fresh taste and thirst for
the same four letters that have been cycling
through my mind. Subdued for the first minute,
like a haze, until you become mulch thickening
my saliva and we become memories—fading
into one-liners, one words, and then,
an afterthought. A flash of strands from
your golden brown hair—swinging, glittering from
the sun—as you ran, maybe. Or the red-orange leaves
of autumn. Here, only the seasons are definite. Last
night, you were scattered across the uncut grass—faint,
brown, indisposed. I let the wind shuffle you
over black cement. Is it wrong to want to remember the
roundness—our plump lips on our mother’s breasts, the way
we were held, the way we will never be held again. Am I
wrong? Your camisole ends right at the top of your navel
and I could measure the radius down—then what?
When our growth was cherished, your mother
added ruffles to your pants as you grew taller; what do you
think of that now, when we hem our dresses mid-thigh, when
I can barely make out your height. The leaves
grow, fall, regrow—opulent, naked, fruitful, fruitless—a type of
affirmation. If only you behaved that way. If only
I had the capacity to make you. But only love is
unmothered: when it cries in the mornings, when it
reaches for the sun, who has nothing to give anymore. I have scraped
my finger against every edge of every leaf blown by and
memorised each venation. Do you know that the wind blows pollen,
dust at my face? All this time passes, and still, I wait.

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Sophia Liu is a Chinese-American writer and artist from New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Ekphrastic Review, Sheila Na Gig, Eunoia Review, Bitter Fruit Review, the Perch, and elsewhere. She volunteers as a writing teacher for the Princeton Learning Experience and wants a pet cat.

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