BY ESTHER SUN
I can’t remember the last time I slept
past six. Black-and-white film reel
days whirl by before suddenly
it’s three a.m. again, my breath twisting
slender and naked in the cold, glow
of the laptop screen ripening
my eyes red like plums. Digital
metronome of young America pulsing go,
go, go. January: a hollow canvas, blurred
end, still the same car engines
threading sound into the silence outside, same
dirty plates sleeping in the sink
like daughters. There is so much to do and so
little left of me. The laptop’s heat fevers
my thighs, braces them against
the city night’s 35 mm chill, its finite
frames per second. The couple in the apartment
across the street slow dancing in front
of their window — when I look up again
the building is dark and I’m not sure
what is or isn’t delusion. Tomorrow, more hours
will sift in like snow. As they approach
I’ll turn on the lights, fill a glass
of water, quiet myself to meet them.
Esther Sun is a Chinese-American writer from the Silicon Valley in Northern California. A Pushcart Prize nominee via Carve Magazine, she has been recognized for her poetry by Bennington College, the National YoungArts Foundation, and the Alliance for Young Writers and Artists. Esther’s poems appear in The Indianapolis Review, Up North Lit, Birdcoat Quarterly, Sine Theta Magazine, and elsewhere. She will attend Columbia University in fall 2021.