Laura Ma
Apparitions Do Not Dream of Second Chances
My younger self is luminous, decaying in the radiation
of dying stars. She dreams my image
into memory through crayon wax. Pigments streaking
cellulose. Meteorites trailing pages
of a future lost to cataclysm. To her, I am the cosmic
bottleneck, the what-could’ve-been,
supernovas and probabilities vortexing through phantom
limbs. In five years, she will have no
shadow and I will spend millennia chasing the last of
her sunburnt flickers. In a heatwave,
her skin will roughen with blisters, hands
flinching at voices, hemoglobin
saturating constellations. What is memory if not the
next iteration? Soul floating to the
exosphere, it loops to portals to parallel universes over
& over again. I cradle her gossamer
half-lives and piece her from a million infrared timelines,
praying that this one will listen.
This shared birthright, vestiges in déjà vu rewind; it
whispers: We were meant to live.
of dying stars. She dreams my image
into memory through crayon wax. Pigments streaking
cellulose. Meteorites trailing pages
of a future lost to cataclysm. To her, I am the cosmic
bottleneck, the what-could’ve-been,
supernovas and probabilities vortexing through phantom
limbs. In five years, she will have no
shadow and I will spend millennia chasing the last of
her sunburnt flickers. In a heatwave,
her skin will roughen with blisters, hands
flinching at voices, hemoglobin
saturating constellations. What is memory if not the
next iteration? Soul floating to the
exosphere, it loops to portals to parallel universes over
& over again. I cradle her gossamer
half-lives and piece her from a million infrared timelines,
praying that this one will listen.
This shared birthright, vestiges in déjà vu rewind; it
whispers: We were meant to live.
Biography
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Laura Ma (she/her) is 18 and based in California. Her words have appeared in The Lumiere Review, Parentheses Journal, Claw & Blossom, Capsule Stories, and more. She will attend UC Berkeley in the fall. Find her on Twitter @goldenhr3.
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