Visual art by Vita Wang
You are everything,
the sky,
the trees,
the earth,
they’re all a part of you, and you are a part of them.
You are the pigeon,
soaring through the sky,
and landing on the telephone wire.
You are the door to the house across the street,
slightly open, not completely closed
as if it couldn’t decide.
You are the pinecone
that just fell off the branch.
It collides with the ground with a thump.
You are the glass bottle,
shattered on the pavement,
like a million broken secrets
that will never be told.
You are the child,
sitting on the roof, lost in thought,
pretending to be something you aren’t.
You shouldn’t be pretending. You should be studying.
You have a math test tomorrow.
You must be crazy, sitting on the roof,
wasting your time.
You don’t want to flunk the test again.
What are you doing on the roof, anyway?
It’s dangerous to sit on the roof. If you fell off,
you could really hurt yourself.
You return to your bedroom window.
Somewhere, across the street, you hear a door slam.