Most days, I wake up wishing I were something
like cold thunder. As in Zendaya, or the girl
in a pinafore dress who bakes rhubarb tarts in a cottage
made of cheese. I am instead trying to be punctual.
Zoom calls, grocery store appointments, downtown Zumba classes,
the studio slanted between the bank and a fruit market. This
is how I comfort my mother when she calls. Today, it’s five
across and the cause of this summer’s poor air quality
across U.S. cities, except I can’t stop talking
about the green bottle fly nailed to the windowpanes,
how I killed it with my right hand. Really, I should be sad
about bleach and glaciers, but I’m still mourning
my premature white hairs. The Zumba instructor emails
Saturday, apologizing because she can’t go outside, the fumes
disrupt her chakra. I call my mother, tell her it was smoke all along.

Grace Marie Liu is a Chinese-American poet from Michigan. She is a 2024 YoungArts National Winner with Distinction in Poetry, and an alumna of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, Peach Mag, Sundog Lit, and Vagabond City Lit, among others. She serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Polyphony Lit.