Phoenix Tian

perhaps if you caught me outside,

i’d be cutting corners    for the shortest
path home      carrying the weight
of two unautomated emails like a sparrow,
worm-in-the-mouth.    every day
the road finds    a hundred ways to     tell me
that i’m not alone. but i’m confused cause every day
skulls   roadkill etc. looked at me as if to say
birds of a feather         flop together.
dad calls&asks if i’ve decided
on      the university i’d         pitch
my ligament-thin joint pain to&i say
i don’t really know      right now
maybe i’d be     an undertaker or a critic-slash-
archaeologist or something. i’d dig out    the times i glanced
at someone with the wrong eye    passed by a plant
&asked for its name     like habit could blunt
this ache into an acorn. i still forget what they’ve said
regardless. these days    all i ever do is   give a name
to things        as though the bark’s xylem would decay
a little slower when saved by     someone’s salutation.
dear mangosteen         dear frangipani,—
what’s within our trunks is       pretty much similar.
our chinese textbooks    once featured a schoolgirl where
all her peers wanted to be lawyers&doctors&engineers
but she wanted to be     a tree. she must not know
that calm starts  where tenderness       departs
&each time i imagine    branch touching branch
i open my eyes&find myself still rooted to the soil.

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Phoenix Tian is a 16-year-old Singaporean writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, ALOCASIA, and Genrepunk Magazine. She likes talking to herself.