Sunrise Kingdom, by Emma Miao

Sunrise Kingdom, by Emma Miao (Canada) 2020

Sunrise Kingdom

The summer air flattens me like a leaf 
pressed against a window in a storm. 
The veins curling, as if extending through
the glass; a pin burrowing on a whim 
into a stranger’s life. The days are wilting. 
The nights. Diving into a lake to find 
it has turned into glass, and then to realize 
it isn’t a lake at all, but a mirror, reflecting 
my secrets like moths to a wound. 
My thoughts echo into the crisscross of stars.
I can hear my voice, speaking, as if to say
what you are looking for is out there, find it. 
The shivering first breath upon surfacing 
the water. A flurry of doves into a pair of lungs. 
A dandelion breaking topsoil. Come fall, it will 
scatter to the wind, its existence lost in the folds 
of time. Still, it blooms. As if to say: I will exist, 
even ephemerally. I yearn for low tide,
the sand ridging beneath my toes. The waves,
constantly evolving into the same thing.
I dream of diving backwards. The unspooling of myth
into reality. I dream of swimming in syllables as if 
I can catch living on my tongue. Catch 
footprints on the shore at night, knowing 
they’ll be gone by morning. ​

Emma Miao

Emma Miao is a Chinese-Canadian poet from Vancouver, BC. Her poems appear in Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Emerson Review, Rising Phoenix Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, among others. The winner of the F(r)iction Poetry Contest 2020, Emma is a Commended Foyle Young Poet 2019, a COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective Fellow, and an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Her poetry and piano album, Oscillation, is forthcoming this winter. Find her at emmamiao.weebly.com.