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

我在月亮上看到你.

 

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