Yong-Yu Huang
Elegy for Future Self
I confess that tonight, I am ignoring the crippled wings
rustling in the marsh. All eyes on you. I do not have enough
to offer as repentance. Ignore the funeral––they are mourning
for that which has not yet come to pass, the aching of the river.
Sometimes there is only the crowing before the dawn,
or the beckoning of a mother. Her child crying for a self
still pearling in her teeth. That is to say, I miss you like a becoming.
Something I am forever seeking, slipping from my fingers
and scattering in the wind––a tide lost before the first retrograde.
How we could have been transcendent, lapping at every second.
I am sorry that I will never know you, that I will know the taste of
gunmetal cold in my mouth before I understand how
I exhaled you. Every breath blinding white against the horizon.
How strange it is that I know what I am seeking in the redshift.
When the sun trembles, I begin counting backwards,
tonguing a name for every heartbeat edging closer to yours.
Consider this: a girl ankle-deep in still water,
waiting for the land to flood in memory.
rustling in the marsh. All eyes on you. I do not have enough
to offer as repentance. Ignore the funeral––they are mourning
for that which has not yet come to pass, the aching of the river.
Sometimes there is only the crowing before the dawn,
or the beckoning of a mother. Her child crying for a self
still pearling in her teeth. That is to say, I miss you like a becoming.
Something I am forever seeking, slipping from my fingers
and scattering in the wind––a tide lost before the first retrograde.
How we could have been transcendent, lapping at every second.
I am sorry that I will never know you, that I will know the taste of
gunmetal cold in my mouth before I understand how
I exhaled you. Every breath blinding white against the horizon.
How strange it is that I know what I am seeking in the redshift.
When the sun trembles, I begin counting backwards,
tonguing a name for every heartbeat edging closer to yours.
Consider this: a girl ankle-deep in still water,
waiting for the land to flood in memory.
Biography
Yong-Yu Huang (she/her) is a Taiwanese teenager who has lived in Malaysia for most of her life. Her work has been previously published in Sine Theta Magazine and Hominum Journal, among others. In her free time, she can be found humming the Doctor Who theme song.
