LITERALIZING BUTTERFLIES BECAUSE WE’RE ALL SPECIMENS

to believe that our bodies are biodegradable &
dancing like soiled peaches in the fire when
i stop short of mourning. to believe that you would
exchange skin for pink, rinded wings in oiling
ourselves with the skeleton of the kitchen & distinguish
between sinew and skies. to believe that every flight of
stairs is actually a flight & sweet with light
that burns like margarine in the pool of our vigil,
the banister unfolding over itself. to kneel before
the butterfly we emptied out of itself, spring oozing
like silence & starlessness from its corset. our deer
hearts are mellifluous in the backyard but we pretend
the fire is rifeless like the moths bargaining in our ribcage.

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Ariel Wu, 16, Shanghai - China ✯ IG: @ariel_in_arcady

“Ariel Wu is a high school junior hailing from Shanghai, China. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in SOLEIL, Humans Of, and PVLSE. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers Studio and the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop. Her poem “persephone” won the first prize of the 2023 PVLSE Summer Writing Competition. When she is not writing about the quandaries of girlhood and over-analyzing classic literature, she can be found playing the viola, vibing to indie pop, and dancing.”