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Clouds in the Sky

ISSUE 4: ETHER

[we highly recommend reading on desktop for optimal experience]

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CAROLINE CHOU

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helios

Caroline Chou | Poetry

carve steepled fingers             beneath my chin

      in promise      what do you want?

             crescent moons etched along my cheekbones

a memory of ichor       and the taste of summer like

       bronze rusting on the tongue

in dreams I dare to imagine existence

             as immortality

                          perhaps

in another millenia        this skin will feel mine again

             I've seen so many suns        spill from your lips

       their cadence made careless with age

                                     gilded beauty peeling up in slivers

dissolving        trickling down honeyed wrists.

                                       really? you ask

      and in silver cycles

                           I return to my mortal mind

my pulse settling soft         between the stars

             a space between breaths to ask:

                          in the years you have lived, has daylight

             ever truly warmed its touch?

I will chase the horizon a thousand times

              and learn to harbor      this shortened life     

                                                                 if you tell me it will someday.               

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN THE RENAISSANCE REVIEW

post-argument pantomime

Caroline Chou | Poetry

lights up on a 21st century kitchen. 

lined up on one counter, three yellowed oranges,

skins bordering on green (just barely ripe), 

a fourth one is tossed back and forth between my hands. 

i am seated on the tile floor, back against the fridge.

Enter YOU. both of us wear porcelain masks.

mine is cracking at the edges. yours is not. 

YOU: i’m sorry. 

i peel my orange. it does not want to be peeled,

skin clinging hard to fruit. i dig my nails in. 

a beat. 

YOU: i’m sorry that you interpreted my words that way. 

they are too sharp—pulp punctures, 

acid spraying everywhere. 

(neither of us are staying on script) 

another beat. 

(but some audience is watching, 

and the show must go on.) 

ME: (swallowing a sigh) it’s okay. 

YOU exit the stage, and i’m left alone. 

(performance after performance, this scene 

does not get any easier. and its ending is always the same.)

 

fade to black.

last words of a fallen fairy

Caroline Chou | Poetry

bending over backwards into the green

& the wild, i am just a girl, violet dripped 

into my eyes; find me six feet deep

in monkshood flowers, leaning into soil. 

this land was steeped in gold & sage

but since drained of indigo shade, my body 

left to kiss the sun & all its searing edges.

i feel its palm even now, pressed 

against my wings. say i cried out. surely my

song is lost to the murmuring of dappled trees. 

in another life, i’d shy away from 

the burning bite of blossoms, but now, 

all i do is part my lips with thirst 

for lavender blue. all i do is swallow, 

purple blooming on the tongue. all i do

is close my eyes & sink into the earth. 

all i do is sigh, petals ground to bitter honey,

waiting for these flowers to hollow me whole.

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Caroline Chou (she/her) is a writer from Maryland with a love for leitmotifs and magical realism. Her work has been published in The Aurora Journal, Rising Phoenix Review, Aster Lit, and Blue Marble Review, among others. When she’s not writing, you'll likely find her reading fantasy, making playlists, or doodling everywhere she shouldn’t. Falling into fictional worlds is her favorite form of travel.

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