Cherry Chérie
Lilian Ha
The highway is swaying beneath our feet like
an offbeat waltz. Where there is song,
everything finds its way uptown:
crimson heat
floodlights, the thumbnail of a moon.
It is too dark
anyways to tell skin from freckled skin
to split breath from liquored air. Between us
a backseat jutting leather.
A radio spitting glass. At every stoplight
I ask you to sing me the lowest note, the one
that rings like age old scotch. And each time you
empty throat, the engine floods.
Buckles down, asks for another chance. Calls
maybe
this is how
it always is. To draw first blood, to stain
the interior of a heart. I was just too small, too eager.
A pockmarked daughter, a glow in the dark
doll. Sweet enough
to be gum-smacked, cherry glossed, a soda POP
tossed between two glass hands.
I opened my mouth around you
in parentheses. Asked to be devoured, didn’t I?
It was soft, I was kind.
Who could blame you
fickle thing.
Lilian Ha is a senior in high school from the suburbs of Seattle, Washington, where she enjoys long hikes and sugarless coffee. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The James Franco Review, Yellow Chair Review, The Gambler, and Rogue Agent, among others.