it is may again,
and everything becomes a new type of tender.
we are tethering at the edge of summer,
our youth golden & our skins raw, like mango flesh.
i watch you stare intensely into the coral blue of the ocean
feet planted into soft bodies of sand, rolling over,
you tell me that the world is ending.
corals left tooth-white & boneless by climate change.
glaciers melting like candle wax into the fade of every winter horizon.
still, nothing here has changed.
above us, looper moths circle the sky, spiraling
in perfect halos. they falter under the moonlight,
wings flinting between aluminum and copper gold.
a plover lands on the neck of a tree.
the branch buckles under its weight.
for miles around us, there is nothing but
sage bushes & memories left by half-moon lovers.
maybe we are searching for something to give our names to.
maybe we believe that if we wait long enough,
an answer will appear, washing up softly with the waves.
maybe the reason i look at you, now, is because i half expect
to find that answer, or some version of it, at least.
you laugh, and your laughter quivers in the air
like echolocation. it transforms into something sweet,
taking flight in the shape of an angel-winged tern.
i consider catching it for a moment, to cup it gently in the crease
of my hands like i do with all things i’m too afraid to lose.
instead, it slips away, & withers with the sounds
of trembling cicadas.
if we stay here too long, we will erode with the mountains.
become nothing but the fossils we find, old & bruising.
This poem first appeared in the anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023).
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Eva Chen is a fourth-year student at Yale University majoring in Economics and East Asian Studies. In 2024, she spent eight weeks in Taiwan studying at Harvard Taipei Academy as a Richard U. Light Fellow. From 2022-23, she was the City of Burlingame’s Youth Poet-in-Residence. In 2023, she was named a California Emerging Artist Fellow. Eva’s poetry has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and featured in The Offing, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Catcher Zine, Elan Literary Magazine, and KALW radio.
