by phoebe sozou
edited by ellena lu and alloe mak

everything will change and then it will end,
and every human being in the history of existence has been
afraid of this at one point or another.
every day the sun cuts a pale path through the colourless
dawn and the windless stretch of morning, pinned between
my front steps and the span of identical roofs plastered to the suburban horizon.
every summer night the whole house heaves
below the leaden yellow moon like it’s choking on cherry pits
and humid air so thick it coats my bedroom window,
and every wish i make is the same six or
seven words, scrambled, like that will make a difference
to whoever is or isn’t listening to me count sheep—until i remember
that the sink is still full of dishes i am not going to do tomorrow,
or the day after that, or even the day after that day, and the one
thing i want is actually several smaller things stacked up inside
each other like the nesting doll my mother had in her office when
we still lived on an island with palm trees in the road. and every
time i think about love i am more sure that it should be like the
string of prepositional phrases your teacher begs you to break
into manageable clauses, which is to say it should be so incessant
and unwieldy that only a twelve year-old girl who thinks she’s
going to be the next jane austen could dream it up.