poem
- elichvar
- Apr 11
- 1 min read
Updated: 13 minutes ago
by Jennifer Choi
the weather of snakes
that afternoon, grandma was folding the laundry
as she crawled into my uncle’s pajamas,
saying stains are peeled off into sons & sons into mothers,
& putting the freshly washed socks on her head.
should the stains be dried in the shade?
uncle sheds his skin & turns into other uncles,
slowly curling around the word "mother,"
uncles who are single, vegetarians, atheists,
uncles whose words have been forgotten, their mouths growing older.
their talents include fainting under the table,
licking their tongues like grown-ups, or
mistaking sleeping grandma for a dead mouse.
do stains get wetter in the shade?
the house is filling with soapy water.
the three rooms look a little tidier now,
soon the patterns of the stains will change,
but grandma is hardly drying out.
i look down at the bubbling house,
someone has hung my uncle on the rooftop.
i reach for the hand of the deepening shade.
i think i’m ready to shed myself now.
Jennifer Choi is a passionate high school student. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Incandescent Review, Altered Reality Magazine, Academy of Heart and Mind, and Culterate Magazine, among others.
