a paleontologist once told me her bones could lift the world. she showed me, let me stroke the splintered ridges, run my hands along the epiphysis grooves. in her closet is a collection of old relics, and she asks if i want to be fossilized. i tell her no, but she pours the pitcher anyway, and my skin cumulates honey that hardens into a prison of amber. i’m left to collect dust.
an astronomer once told me that the secret to finding extraterrestrial life was to look inside. i press my face to the telescope’s eye and see myself hinged to the curvatures of the cavity, plastered along the partitions, and she collides into my soil with her burning, sweating, kinetic energy. i am a floating cadaver, bruised with the imprintations of craters, trapped in time until quantum mechanics can invent a device to fish me out of this well.
a civil engineer once told me how to fix myself. she said build bridges from your heart to your head. if you use up all your materials now, you’ll end up broke and confused. well i’m confused right now, i answer. so my hands reach for planks of wood and i build a dam, stack the logs into syncopated staggers until i get a wall that is too tall for her to climb. there are splinters lodged into the silver linings of my palm, and the reservoir billows out into an erupting wave of white foam. gone is the dam, gone are the nonexistent bridges.
Katherine Wong is a student at Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) in the Creative Writing Conservatory. She enjoys writing speculative fiction, poetry, and songs. Her work has been recognized in numerous competitions including the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She also is a writer for the LA Times High School Insider and frequently reviews science fiction entertainment and covers current public health issues. Outside of writing, Katherine plays the piano and runs a community service project called STEM THE ART, which teaches youth a combined curriculum in the sciences and the arts.