Aynie Lane

Backpack Full of Mooncakes

I wanted to be here, there, in your sight (then gone again), I wanted my shoes (to scuff and the dirt to stain) I wanted colour in my cheeks (and a plan to run), I wanted telegrams (and whispered secrets under torch lit sheets), I wanted (tools bigger than my forced surrender in) the palm of your hand I wanted the raw and the bloody, (not afraid to put up a fight), I wanted to live off youtiao and rock sugar (snatched from kitchen counters) I wanted a (messy) mouth and words (I couldn't stop from coming out), I wanted (to suck the sap from) trees and (lick dewdrops of) honey (from my fingertips)

I wanted a language to fit me snug

Wanting,

Wanting greedy grubby hands and a gifted mind for a little girl

Too much to want without the words to express

The words that could be said, did nothing to ease the dread

What is she to do

But run -

Build a boat like the one her parents came on,

Become a pilot & fly a plane to see some better sights

More than the constant sewing kits inside cookie tins,

Put a brick on the pedal & steer till she hit

Something in the right direction

Snaggle-toothed grin and a tea leaf stuck in her teeth

A taker of power from every height she could reach

Around the dinner table, pleating dumpling skin

Messy uneven folds and flour in her hair

There was nothing that made her feel more like a genius

Not the kumon tests or the kinds of words she read

Out of the womb for a decade or so,

And the rough air had oxidised her

Quaint, quiet qipao

Brittle friction, bones ready

to break, knee to knee on the way to

Flushing

That was her corner store

A city with shelves of:

Handmade cheungfun,

Hawthorn flakes

Hand pulled noodles in an
Oil spill of aromatics

On the weekends she’d sit and wait, ready to take

At night, she’d peer through her window to wish

The moon goodbye,

hands sticky and sweet

I wanted to peer through crescent space, I wanted a moon made from lotus paste.