Tingyu Liu: MONOCULAR • Cleaver Magazine

Tingyu Liu
MONOCULAR

Remembering, still: Sunday egg scrambles, green
…………..peppers and sharp cheddar adorning
…………..our fingers, coffee pot chuckling.
Tilt and: our slip of a room
…………..in Havana, stumbling on the party downstairs, sweet
…………..cake kiss, warm cola in colored cups.
Tilt: our orange kayak flush
…………..with the Atlantic, two Coronas propped
…………..between us, shared spots of cool.

Now: winter and
…………..walking into a corner bar
…………..in Little Italy, bare
…………..golden bulbs and stained counters and I turn 360,
lost in this palindrome,
…………..wanting not wanting.

A bird’s eye view:
…………..stranger, stranger, stranger.

But, had her beak hovered
…………..on you—I think
…………..even, I think that, I think even—

…………..we’d still be a winter
…………..each, a hemisphere apart.

Trees can’t be green everywhere.
…………..A bird changes direction
…………..…………..by beating her left and right wing at different speeds.

Tingyu Liu was born in Huaian, China, grew up in Miami, and currently works in Boston in biotech. She has been published in The Normal School, Four Way Review, Borderlands, Bodega, and elsewhere, as well as various scientific journals for her neuroscience research. She has degrees from Pomona College and MIT.