Solar Eclipse
Shunmel Syau
you bare that wolf’s snarl
from forgotten days.
it’s been a while,
but you no longer flinch when your sword bites
into flesh and carves into bone.
there’s art to this madness—
each blow a clash of heavenly bodies,
scattering lives like stardust
and knocking us all out of orbit.
your eyes burn like hellfire.
and maybe you’re the demon
you’ve been trying to kill. you
haven’t looked in the mirror in a while.
(i’m not sure if you want to.)
you used to be lightning
that i tried to catch with
my cupped hands. untouchable
and blinding. wild strength
under all that luster.
and i’ll be the moon, okay?
cold and living on borrowed light.
(so please stop looking for darkness.)
pulling the tides close like bedsheets
because misery loves company. and
i like how i hang underwater.
when you fell with
his blade in your chest, i
(when a follower outlives a god,
does that phenomenon make a sound?)
saw the sun extinguish
as if it were a mere comet.
and i shed my starlight to
descend into full darkness. because it’s cruel
to take away someone’s light
and tell them to look at all this empty.
so i picked up my sword again. closed my eyes.
and drowned us all in red.
Shunmel Syau is a seventeen-year-old writer from California. Her work has appeared in Just Poetry!!! and Star 82 Review, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief at Shallow Oceans, a nonfiction reader at BioLiterary, and the social media manager at Moledro. When not faithfully chasing after her elusive muse, you can find her playing volleyball, planning angsty death scenes, or wandering downtown with her friends and drinking milk tea.