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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Supply and Demand

By Lillian Hua

 

The two of them wore white to prom,

her thin layers of chiffon flared like pixie wings poised

and we knew it was something magical

if only because the red strings of fate sang

and moonlight glowed where he kissed her.

When wine spilled on her bodice,

she laughed, drunk off the night already anyway,

washed away the truth with bridges from the past,

glanced up once at cesspool skylights

and declared she’d love him for better, for worse,

even after death or college did them part.

(If you have endless quantities of a resource,

does that drive its demand down to zero?)

But distance, it pulls too taut, then plays melodies

on Atropos’ lyre until the lines

snap, leaving in the air a diminished seventh, dissonant

but finished. And it was only after the crashes, depressions,

the inflation, consulting, tallies on their palms, debts, cycles

of arpeggios ebbing and flowing and slamming against doors, when finally

they realized the more interest, dopamine rushes,

genuine apologies they wanted from each other,

the less they had to give.

 

 

Lillian is a 17-year-old gal with chronic vagabond symptoms, but her heart’s more or less obliged to smelly onion roots, so Chicago’s lucky enough in that sense. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, New Voices Young Writers, and Sierra Nevada College.

 

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Three/Fall

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