in those days before i knew how to write, we lived in a two-story wooden house overlooking a hill. dozens of them dated to the 1970s, carbon copies from the conveyor belt—high slanting roof, graying cedar exterior, heavy sliding glass doors that muted the afternoon sun—large milk cartons brimming with a storybook wistfulness.
outside the big bedroom upstairs, a rickety wooden porch hung onto its splinter, draped woven cobweb shawl. hollow, rotted from the inside. mother once warned me never to step foot on it, unless i wanted to fall twenty heart-dropping feet to my untimely death. fen shen sui gu, chinese syllables a hiss across her tongue. an avid reader of biology textbooks, i wondered as a child how a body shatters into ash, bone crushed to ivory powder. later, i discovered hyperbole, grew meeker with each passing year, learned not to tempt fate. maybe there is a pain much worse than death; maybe, like icarus, we are
meant to fall.
we moved to a prettier house eventually, and our old sycamore tree wept, scattered her russet leaves to the ground. that last day, plucking the wilting cyclamens from their terracotta pots, i glanced up at the
forbidden porch. everything faltered before the rueful sun’s strike of red. by then, i knew it was actually called a balcony, that forlorn contraption swaying in evening wind. i remember i asked: would the little girl moving in next month have sense enough to stay away?
mother told me construction workers were arriving soon. i imagined their neon hats and reflective vests descending like a swarm, ripping out each tortured nail. they’d lift a proudly painted balcony and install it in place, its predecessor forgotten, remembrance incinerated. but pride will not spare the balcony. someday, its newly-hewed orange will pale, the wood termiting with age.
there’s no room in this world for forever.
//
in those days before i knew how to write, we lived in a two-story wooden house overlooking a hill. dozens of them dated to the 1970s, carbon copies from the conveyor belt—high slanting roof, graying cedar exterior, heavy sliding glass doors that muted the afternoon sun—large milk cartons brimming with a storybook wistfulness.
outside the big bedroom upstairs, a rickety wooden porch hung onto its splinter, draped woven cobweb shawl. hollow, rotted from the inside. mother once warned me never to step foot on it, unless i wanted to fall twenty heart-dropping feet to my untimely death. fen shen sui gu, chinese syllables a hiss across her tongue. an avid reader of biology textbooks, i wondered as a child how a body shatters into ash, bone crushed to ivory powder. later, i discovered hyperbole, grew meeker with each passing year, learned not to tempt fate.
we moved to a prettier house eventually, and our old sycamore tree wept, scattered her russet leaves to the ground. that last day, plucking the wilting cyclamens from their terracotta pots, i glanced up at the forbidden porch. everything faltered before the rueful sun’s strike of red. by then, i knew it was actually called a balcony, that forlorn contraption swaying in evening wind. i remember i asked: would the little girl moving in next month have sense enough to stay away?
mother told me construction workers were arriving soon. i imagined their neon hats and reflective vests descending like a swarm, ripping out each tortured nail. they’d lift a proudly painted balcony and install it in place, its predecessor forgotten, remembrance incinerated. but pride will not spare the balcony. someday, its newly-hewed orange will pale, the wood termiting with age.
there’s no room in this world for forever.
//
graying wistfulness
fate scattered in evening wind
there's no forever.
fate scattered in evening wind
there's no forever.
Iris Cai is a junior from the SF Bay Area. Her poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society of America, Gannon University, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and is published in or forthcoming from On the Seawall, Neologism Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, she is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of Eucalyptus Lit. When she’s not writing, Iris plays piano and takes too many pictures of her cat.