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Amy Li

I Calculate Grief in Seconds

​I mouth a body, then an elegy. As if our hollow
is enough to hold our limbs tangent as shorelines.
 
I run. I scrub my tongue until it bleeds and count seconds
and throw glass out windows and kill butterflies simply
 
for existing. I paint layers of bitter mint atop your burnt
sugar, submerged midnight, body-smothered-as-bird
 
could-have-been-except-we-couldn’t-part-the-tide-
like-Moses-you-should’ve-been-Moses-but-instead-you-are-
 
a-woman taste. I have belonged to grief in this lifetime, watched
the clocks until they peeled from the walls & intoxicated
 
me with their bare hands. I run not because I’m being chased but because I like
the burn. All the corpses around me are kaleidoscopes of blue. Butterfly wings
 
now black butter soup for the birds to pick at. My fingers tap syllables
sounding like celebration, but you know better. The world whirs,
 
whizzes, colors fractured at their lineages. Families and families
of faces. I close my eyes and there’s a kaleidoscope of light.
 
I open them and there’s a kaleidoscope on the processes of dying. All the bodies I know
are always already buried when I get there, but I like to blame that
 
on traffic. I realize all the glass has already been thrown out the windows,
so I sit criss-cross-apple-sauce & pop bubble wrap like bubble
 
gum & I am the power of the kind of indirection that doesn’t
bleed & such is the sum of daughter, and daughter.

Biography

Amy Li (she/her) is a young writer and artist from Georgia. She edits for The Augment Review, and her work appears in or is forthcoming in Gone Lawn, Lumiere Review, and Biological Creatures, among others. Though her favorite activity is probably procrastinating, she also adores winter walks, binging TV shows, and sweet tea.
 
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ISSN 2639-426X
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  • Home
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    • Issue 31
    • Issue 30
    • Issue 29
    • Issue 28
    • Issue 27
    • Issue 26
    • Issue 25
    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 1
  • Submissions