the woman who lived three blocks down asked me to call her miss tita beth one morning / said she liked the way it sounded / like a golden echo across tissue and muscle / to soak through the skin / we were never bound by blood / only bound by the extra soup cans she sent me home with / lessons on how not to spill a single grain of rice / how to play solitaire with cards she bought from kiosks during layover flights / on bed sheets she stole from hotel rooms / we were always stretched like two pairs of discarded pants / she never had any children / only the world to bring to bed with / dreamt of kissing break awake those days / she was spitting seeds onto the green tiled floor / cursed in tagalog / prayed in english / when she rose from the jasmine scented ocean of fabric / the mere bow of her lips made men scream / Santa Maria help us now.
fish don’t have shadows
the man eats watermelon for breakfast.
lets the dog lick juice from the bend of his palm and run away. so the only sound to fill the room
is that of his goldfish
rising from the surface of its water,
and diving back, submerged again.
a scaly thing the weight of two quarters
slipping through plastic trees.
the man reaches to answer the cordless phone,
which began ringing throughout the room.
and suddenly her voice curls around him,
consisting of golden ribbon intertwined
with the shake roll of a brass tambourine.
the prodigal daughter has returned.
he wonders if next year at this time
where there still be laundry strewn across the floor,
mapping the places he no longer chooses to care for.
he wants to ask if next year at this time
there will be a baby to whisper to.
instead, she speaks of wood varnish,
cracks in her apartment walls.
and when he hangs up, the silence is back,
and there is an orange acrobat on the carpet
gasping for air.
Born and raised in SoCal, Kate Hizon attends the Orange County School of the Arts studying Creative Writing. Aside from crafting poetry and prose, she enjoys graphic design, winning at family mahjong night, folding laundry, and over-organizing her music playlists.