The Swan
Sophia Liu steps onto wet cobblestone to pick at seaweed. Even the mud on the white feathers down the nape of her neck glistens. And there, her wing protrudes out like a wooden splinter. Soil stains my white shoes, but I take one step forward. Look at how a distance is kept until only seaweed is beside me. Then, she must come. & she does. At last, I feel her wing, touch the feathers even. Almost like stroking the palm of your hand. Almost like brushing my hands through your coffee brown hair, tucking a strand behind your ear. I knock on the fire station to tell them about the swan, but she is just some bird and I am just a passerby. All I have are my blackened shoes and the swan-- moving away from me, back into the opaque, boundless water. I tell myself her existence never mattered to the lake as a whole as she becomes a glimmer and I leave the lake with you in mind. It had to be later that I learned about the Angel wing swan. How a week later, a carcass would wash up on shore-- white flesh ripped apart and red like full-flowering roses in new snow. Like that, maybe our fate was predestined. I left you knowing that you would be gone. My shoes dripped black water for days, never to resemble white again. |