When karma shot him in
the bubble tea shop, they
shot you too. Heart fell straight
out of your chest, plopped across
the bamboo floor, thrashing like a
fish out of water. Its ugly veins
rupturing, spitting ostensibly.
A desiccated, carved out
hollow. Nightmares of
tapioca balls exiting the
revolver, ricocheting off
the walls, smearing all the
love letters you traced with
him in spilled sugar. How
to not burst whilst
rearranging burnt
bergamot orange and
darjeeling tea to call each other
“honey.” Now he bleeds
oolong like he used to
inhale it from your mouth in
between shifts, in
between the eternal spaces
where you didn’t utter it
back.
Grace Zhang is a seventeen year old from Princeton High hungry to get out of the bubble and experience the world. Her work has been nationally commended by the Scholastic Art & Writing awards and is forthcoming in the National Poetry Quarterly. Some things she likes are liminal spaces, peach oolong bubble tea, and the mundane morning stars.