一日三秋: one day, three autumns - Madeline Chu (UHS Winner)

crinkled as Carpathian walnut trees,

her knuckles press into the freckled

persimmon skins—& i memorize every

curvature of the couloir cnidarian veins, outstretched like scintillating mung beans

with their ebbing jujube flesh. her deft ministrations

envelope the bǎi yè jié into Venetian knots, spilling across inkwells of a hunched

silhouette—& my childlike mouth craters into

caterwauls of hunger. mechanizing my

starvation into chrysanthemums against alabaster

vertebrae, assembled into stacks of paperwork

and meandering checkbooks—because that is

all i will ever become: the yellowing nectarines,

perspiration dripping in rivulets across my forehead

like bourbon on fresh whetting stones, summertime

whittling into shriveled ginkgo and the mandarin

language deadened upon

my tongue. & tonight,

my quivering feet pester the linoleum

floorboards, phalanges pressed against their

frigidity and Damascus steel handles

just as she lectured me.

the kitchen is full of knives,

writhing against the alabaster of my wrists,

ripened as supermarket apricots & their

surrendering of disfigured syrup,

drooping low and withering in perpendicular lines

until their tendons cease to obey

gritting against the protesting bone—its penitentiary

menageries of our newfound motherland

wrinkled palms cradling tentative fruit,

fingertips atop the vermillion shopping cart handle:

the temptations i mistook as gilded yuan,

mischaracterizing the starvation as salvation.

pópo, i protest with hoarseness, an ignoble

reawakening, the household remains shrouded in

hyperborean smokescreens and casket rawness:

her back towards me, furrowed lips

materializing the same phrases they once did,

the lexicons expunged from my arteries until my

amputated tongue utters garbled sounds, saturated with

American rhododendron

tar amalgamating with coppery sweetness

in my mouth—

her diaphanous touch reassuring me that with

the chopsticks in our hands,

this blood will be the only heritage spilled.


*一日三秋 (one day, three autumns) = a Chinese idiom expressing a sense of extended longing, intense anticipation, loss, and painful separation, indicating the simultaneous slowness and change of autumn

*bǎi yè jié = a traditional Chinese dish consisting of braised tofu skins tied into knots

*pópo = grandmother

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Last Goodbyes - Emma Moran (UHS Runner Up)