Pressed

By Hannah Meyer

Evening Roses (2020)

By Yoojin Shin

beauty doesn’t come easy

When she comes

we will flatten 

our knives to her lips, 

lick the blood from underneath our fingernails,

write the ends of our trailed-off sentences with clean hands

but send them to all the wrong people.

Find meaning in the crevices of our childhood bedrooms 

where moths scatter out

who sensed this day before it began 

at the end of this end

of many ends 

half dreamed up 

before.

When she unzips the earth

we will lay crumpled at her dream’s edge

our blood is her bathwater

shimmering with oil paints & white dust

from white statues of our white princes

etched in lightning.

Beauty doesn’t come easy.

laughing with a mouthful of blood

Pressed together like two unblinking eyes 

their hip bones were once encased in gold

held a shard of seven AM sunlight

a pearl molded from wind.

Now, her hip bones stare like two amnesiatic ghosts

after she swam to the bottom of the lake,

laughed with a mouthful of blood, 

as the fish blinked morse code to the gods

Now every face takes on the contours of yours

each body another one of Chekhov’s guns

itching to unbutton & dissect

with latex fingers 

or bare hands

Sometimes she opens the mouth of the river

stares up at the moon

with her single silver

waning eye.

Hannah Meyer is a writer, director, and dramaturg who recently graduated from Muhlenberg College. She is a fan of sudden lightning storms, chutzpah, and finding the perfect bagel.