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​TEEN SEQUINS 2021: Sophia Liu, Age 15



​40th Road Flushing
​


         October nights, men on crates smoke until
                                                                                     dawn. Blankets of air
                              drop in temperature, graze your fishnet stockings, mini skirt,
                                                                            red lipstick.
 Not long ago, Ma told me that you were
                                           waitresses, and that I should become accustomed
                                                                                  to women standing by.
                 Hand clasped with hers, we walked
                                                     through these human-scented streets, past
                mango stands and
                                          falafel trucks drowned
                                            in perspiration. Where LV bags are bought
 on bed sheets strewn out on the sidewalk, every mouth is
                a sprig of aglaonema in need of its own sun.
                                                        She calls this
                                                                        people mountain, people sea. To touch is 
                                                                                        to breathe.
 If bodies were made to ripen, like apricots hanging
                                        by the strongest branch of the tree, then
                                        ​a hand would come to cup you
                                        ​                down and flesh
                                        ​               you open.
                             But you are no younger than
                                        ​                               my mother—veins thinning,
                                        ​ body meat pulling apart with each month.   Should I call
            you auntie? Should I eye you as Ma grabs

                                        my wrist, tells me that
                                        ​                      this is why I need to study.
             Soon later, down these streets on my own, recognizing you became
                                        ​                                        ​      a task of counting chickens.       
              My mother set foot
                             on this gum-stamped cement, calling it a dreamland.          And you--
              gashed open by foreign hands—what is it like looking
                                              at yourself alive? What is it like being startled awake from a
                                   dream?  

                                               I thought a soul must either be starved
                                                              or unsparing to take in such undisclosed shapes. Yet you
                                              stand unhidden;
 
                                                                                                             hens awaiting farm dogs, more willful
than any expect

                                                                                                                                                 us to be.
 
December enters like a cage and the moon as the
                                       first split of light from the clover fields.
      
Your coats drape down to your ankles; you exchange
                       fishnets for leggings. The east wind sprinkles you
                                                    familiarity, though love is no longer felt by warmth.
                                                                   
This time last year, a body crashed down from a
                      four-story building. Gravity dragged her

                                              red scarf taut against her neck—and as always, 
                                                                                    prevailed. And so, another one of you lost
in

                this sea;
                                             a butterfly crushed into its
 
shadow. 40th Road persists in its
                                             cloudy fish tanks and ginseng stalls—every fruit truck,
                                                                                  burnt taro bun, waiter taking a smoke
​break

                                           at the mercy of the
 
wet pavement. Each overripe nectarine pulped
                             by a thousand footsteps bearing the wind until shriveled, and still,
                                                          keeping shape.
Here I am:
              four-limbed and vigorous enough to know
              that we are not
                                                                                  all that different. All we do is
                                             give. All we do is sleep under the same static sky and nod
when Mama tells us that one day, she will be gone—so we
                    must work harder now—and do we not?
 
                    This coldness aches everyone.
 
                             You are not any more alive than Ma in her pencil skirt.
 
However planted on the concrete--
                                                                                
                                    hold out like a jade cong.

​

​Sophia Liu lives in New York. Her poems and artwork appear or are forthcoming
in the Perch, Storm Cellar, the Ekphrastic Review, Whispering Prairie Press,
Underblong, the Shore
, and elsewhere. She has been recognized by the National
Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the NCTE, Smith College, and Hollins University.
She wants a pet cat.
 

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