Grace Marie Liu

Stop Motion

– for R.

The last time I see you, you’re stuffing your mouth with cotton
until you bleed: beautiful, butterflied girl

in the amber glow of a kitchen. Before, I meet you
on the side of a freeway, scratching a lottery ticket

with red nails, roadkill sandwiched between your Converses.
The wild bluegrass spills into you like rainwater. Oh, R. You

should know at this point that love is something
behind us. In August, I am knee-deep

in the waters, salt in our mouths, and Cupid
is light begging to be loved. You concede, push

my head into a green mirage–your face vacant
and our laughing trembling like a leaf.

If I’m being honest, I tried to wake you up
every time. Your skeleton, dancing. Once

I asked what it was like to kill. It’s easy,
you said, to hit and run. In and out. Clean,

like a knife. The last time I see you, the piss-yellow light
slicing your face into halves, Frank Ocean hums

on the radio. But what color were your eyes,
exactly? Which is the same as saying: This is not an elegy.

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Grace Marie Liu is a Chinese-American poet from Michigan. 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 and Vagabond City Lit, among others. She serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Polyphony Lit.