Maggie Yang

Sweetbitter

“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives”

Emily St. John Mandel

I.

Remember

                that this breath is           temporary

        that this skin        we wear          sheds years   

  that the mandarin              I peeled today    surrendered

                      to my nails          

                                  that our breath ticks like a clock—

                unwinding into     a graveyard of roots.

II.

Notice

        that years turn sweet            bitter

          and       bitter          sweet

    I label the memory           and drop             it in a jar

Years later        I switch the labels.        

 

III.

Watch

a clock fold          over a single branch

like a face, folding

     over tables in the desert             hard with memories sculpted       

              as numbers.           The sky settles           onto the edges of cliffs

solid shadows dull          under the light

                                                of some near horizon.

IV.

Remember

when you told me       you have all the time               in the world?

Today I put the moon in a jar                               and labeled it sun.

Maggie Yang is a poet and artist from Vancouver, Canada. She is a Foyle Young Poet of the Year, and her work has been recognized by the Scholastics Art and Writing Awards, The League of Canadian Poets, The Poetry Society of Virginia, and Poetry in Voice. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Subnivean, F(r)iction Lit, among others. An interdisciplinary artist, she is particularly intrigued by the intersections of the written word with the visual and performing arts.