Elaine Liu
To have your legs, finally,
be still. To not run
a finger over your toes
every morning until they
knock into each other
like the teeth of a comb.
To not have your feet perform
the terror of exile until I
find you two neighborhoods over,
convinced we’re in Yunan
and you’re late for the factory, running
a hand over imaginary pigtails.
You never wanted to die
continents away from your mother,
who you visit in brief doses
of coherence, always apologizing
for her bound feet, or the time your
daughter’s toes caught in bike
spokes and you kept pedaling
because what is survival
if not the chase of movement?
Come, I will lay you out
on the riverbank, as if gravity
be still. To not run
a finger over your toes
every morning until they
knock into each other
like the teeth of a comb.
To not have your feet perform
the terror of exile until I
find you two neighborhoods over,
convinced we’re in Yunan
and you’re late for the factory, running
a hand over imaginary pigtails.
You never wanted to die
continents away from your mother,
who you visit in brief doses
of coherence, always apologizing
for her bound feet, or the time your
daughter’s toes caught in bike
spokes and you kept pedaling
because what is survival
if not the chase of movement?
Come, I will lay you out
on the riverbank, as if gravity
could coax you into staying.
Maybe then you’ll see how rest
is not the absence of inertia,
but the moment a body
finally forgives itself.
Maybe then you’ll see how rest
is not the absence of inertia,
but the moment a body
finally forgives itself.
—
Elaine Liu is an EMT, hospice volunteer, and poet who draws inspiration from living on both sides of the Pacific. Recent works have appeared in EPOCH Magazine, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Bellingham Review and Folio. She is forever grieving the souls lost to the biomedical experimentation in Unit 731.