helios
Caroline Chou
carve steepled fingers beneath my chin
in promise what do you want?
crescent moons etched along my cheekbones
a memory of ichor and the taste of summer like
bronze rusting on the tongue--
in dreams I dare to imagine existence
as immortality
perhaps
in another millennia this skin will feel mine again.
I’ve seen so many suns spill from your lips
their cadence made careless with age
gilded beauty peeling up in slivers
dissolving trickling down honeyed wrists.
really? you ask
and in silver cycles
I return to my mortal mind
my pulse settling soft between the stars
a space between breaths to ask:
in the years you have lived, has daylight
ever truly warmed its touch?
I will chase the horizon a thousand times
and learn to harbor this shortened life
if you tell me it will someday.
in promise what do you want?
crescent moons etched along my cheekbones
a memory of ichor and the taste of summer like
bronze rusting on the tongue--
in dreams I dare to imagine existence
as immortality
perhaps
in another millennia this skin will feel mine again.
I’ve seen so many suns spill from your lips
their cadence made careless with age
gilded beauty peeling up in slivers
dissolving trickling down honeyed wrists.
really? you ask
and in silver cycles
I return to my mortal mind
my pulse settling soft between the stars
a space between breaths to ask:
in the years you have lived, has daylight
ever truly warmed its touch?
I will chase the horizon a thousand times
and learn to harbor this shortened life
if you tell me it will someday.
Caroline Chou (she/her) is a writer from Maryland with a love for leitmotifs and magical realism. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Writers and published in The Aurora Journal and Aster Lit, among others. When she’s not writing, you can find her reading fantasy, playing golf, or doodling everywhere she shouldn’t.