– Ocean Vuong

shaking the sheets like rice paper crumpled
in a giant’s fist. Did you dream that kiss,
              that kiss that skimmed

across the sea of your skin, a skiff trailing stars
in its wake, light blooming like electric
peonies shedding rain-ravaged petals?

Your bones, now hollowed into piccolos, whistle
a melody of ticking clocks and grains
of sand paying out the days of your life.

Even your lungs grow parsimonious
with age, sipping the sky’s elixir
where they once gulped it like Taittinger—
             bright, sparkling, golden.

Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Oxnard, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of Open the Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing (2023). Her work has been widely published, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. http://www.elyabraden.com.