Annette Lin, class of 2025
Fluffy brown ducks. Watching
them dive while the world spins
around them. Summer’s getting
warmer by the minute, but they
don’t seem to mind. While we’re
just sweating in the insufficient
twilight. Watching perfect ducks
with you and I can’t help but
dream of someday being perfect
too. Unbothered from shore
to lake floor. I am not the proud
lady my father wished for. I’m no
indifferent eider: I'm a confused
sigh left in a censored story. I’m
a closed peony at the end of the
season. Plucked prematurely
from the sun, guaranteed only
Maybes and We’ll never knows.
I’m starting to think I don’t need
anything else. That is to say, I’m
tumbling through the sky with you,
wearing inexperience like new
sneakers, one downy hatchling
learning how to dive. Just being
ducks with you: two perfect ducks
in a queer, celestial lake, an endless
lake just for us. Because that’s what
we are: perfect eider duckling stars.
Beautiful girls.
A version of this piece received a Silver Key at the 2024 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. A version of this piece was also published in the Fall 2024 issue of Polyphony Lit as the winner of one of their seasonal contests: read here.