girls perched bayside shedding
masks onto pebbles. drag fingers,
lick ripple, splash dirty off mishaven
legs. who made night turn to wolf?
who thumbed foam into waves?
they slip, half-cast in shallows,
black manes haloing their bodies.
a mist settles; crested reflections
blur into mosaics. remember
palms pressing waists. remember
sighs dancing on lips. when the
fog lifts, the girls are gone.
Emma Miao attends high school in Vancouver, BC. Her work appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Emerson Review, Sine Theta Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. A Commended Foyle Young Poet 2019, she is a poetry reader for Up the Staircase Quarterly and the co-founder and executive editor of Surging Tide Magazine, a Vancouver-based online literary magazine dedicated to empowering youth voices. She is recognized by the Poetry Society UK and the Poetry Institute of Canada. Tweet her @emmaamiao.