Free Write 2
by Caterina Dong
A Freewrite
Let’s:
mourn
graveyards blooming with
thymus tulips
sprouted all over your liver
Bleeding
shame
I had none as a kid
until my father forced otherwise
Do you wonder how it would have
been different too?
round up the dead
time traces a circle through our lives
I meet you and I at the point
where we started.
look at the country
borders lives open-air prisons
people surveillance humanity
knaffeh killings keffiyah
look at the spectral
there is nothing there ex-
cept your luminescence
grinded to firefly bits
talk about erasure
a whole people
wiped out
weapons
with no mercy
why tout your
white out hands
drenched in blood
talk about burden
a weightless object fills your intestines and pours your guts out spilling into spleen apex of appendix storming stromal cells even they cannot control
celebrate our substance
when your birthday candles are all blown out
the cake remains, spongy and porous.
you want to be greater than your parts.
reckon with the past
I refuse. The past will reckon with me.
with the gift of present. with the life of
future. I reckon the past will.
talk about observance
I observe your talk. how you manage
To turn everything into a greater being
but yourself.
demands
I hammer a thin paper into your door. All ninety-
five are there, if you wish to count. If you count
my wishes, you see I have no intention of schism.
I want liberation, sliced thick and served fresh.
mediocrity
I got killed. I saw the sunset and think I am too
feeble to know otherwise. The roof is so, so tall.
weariness
If you know better, do not step outside the line.
It is red for a reason, traced on your back for a reason.
get silky
spiders dedicate their entire lives to this, and
You think You can unattach them from their grace?
remove the obvious from the image
The image is not yours to take,
but ours to imagine together. The
clouds hang like stars above us.
talk about age 9
going trees
climbing bananas
peeling bark
scraping peel
elegies
姥姥,
I hope your bed is comfy
æˆ‘åœ¨æœˆäº®ä¸Šçœ‹åˆ°ä½ .
make a meal and call it supper
is what the british did to the Irish
pepper flakes all around how
dare you keep what is lost for-
ever bite the hand that
claims
to feed you