Claire He

corium encryption

Claire He

yī. the paper cranes splay their wings across the northern sky. upon their folds i carve my mother tongue, an amalgamation of pointed brushstrokes and fevered birdsong. to fold is to compose. to write is to deconstruct. and what remains once you have stripped the paper to its heart?

èr. sometimes, when they are threaded between my fingers, they do not take flight. wǒ xiǎng yào, wǒ ài, wǒ yǒu, and those words are bare, core exposed, drowning like mercury. my accent is one of a northern woman, sutured by the english lexicon. artificiality like taped wings.

sān. pollux is the brightest star in gemini; my dreams are twin to bruised origami; and skin is more easily replaced than time. my tongue quivers upon needlepoint, brush to lips where girls once kissed radium. is it like atlas? i ask, because three thousand cranes are far from a hemisphere, yet devour my collar like carrion.

sì. hang the entrails upon constellations so ink is blood is collateral, and year upon year when your mimicry of hollow-boned angels unfurls the night sky, sew paper like skin and pare a wish before your eyes. three flightless wishes taste like incense. your aftertaste is cyanide.

wǔ. to take a plum’s flesh and stain tissue paper. the pit of a wish is unoriginal: the first thing i learn is to write them in layers of violet prose, through rose-tinted lenses—mandarin draped in morbit—and when you unfold them, remain empty. the words scrawl in vigenère on virginal lips. tell me: do i crush the cranes like jasmines beneath my palms?

fathom imitation

Claire He

i.

the river lethe runs through her fingers, and she will kiss her palms until her lips are stained white. she devours her precursor’s heart under the waning lune. eve ruptures the skin of fruit, chang’e drinks the archer’s elixir, persephone prods the lip of her lover: she shrouds pearls beneath her tongue and lets them froth in the tempest of her wine.

ii.

nine of ten suns bleed into silk. the last leaves icarus drowning. and your muse is not a temptress nor a siren, radial artery embroidered in gold. sew a cross to your breast and call the maiden a goddess. intimacy like asphyxiating: is this what it means to worship? open pandora’s box with a slip of the tongue and you have betrothed yourself to the promise of a magnum opus.

iii.

take her to the carnations beneath the moon. and there lies her predecessor: with lotuses carved into her eyes. you have tried sculpting artifices into atriums, draped a veil over the withered spouse of a long-forgotten muse, let a silver-tongued statue bask in gold. you have not known perfection by your hand, so tug divinity along her crimson thread and drink, cradling fire like prometheus. it is her dowry.

iv.

incense into her cathedral, preservation for one night more. her fingers plunge into inherited wine, temperance becomes antonym to temporary. and there is a story of bastardized devotion, and does it truly matter what her intent is, if chang’e still embraces the sky, wicked in one archive and untarnished in the second? does it matter what is the origin of your mastery, though it is not birthed by clarity, if it is still yours?

v.

prometheus bares his liver to the last sun, you bare yours to a vineyard. and she is the marriage of the scattered myths you have hemmed together. the pursuit of a masterpiece. muse whispers to you the script, brings your hand to her lips, your wrist to her tongue. a paragon which exists only in the midst of delirium, absent from your material incongruities. steal the