A Story of Creation

By: Ed Wade

A girl contemplates her breath

as it fogs the school bus window

on a winter morning. She makes

cloud after cloud, and watches them

evaporate. In one, she draws a circle.

In another, she draws a square. Only

to watch them slowly disappear.

She feels the shadowy blue bodies

of her oceans as another cloud forms

from her lips. She draws a rectangle,

and feels the moon pull it back.

She creates the storm, then the calm.

The silence. Then the thunder collapses

back into calm. Inhale, then exhale.

Then her triangle melts back

into the cold, greasy glass.

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Ed Wade is an American expatriate who has lived in Hanoi, Vietnam since 2012. There, he lectures and edits for RMIT University and enjoys the quaint chaos of the city. Currently Ed is earning his MFA through the University of Texas at El Paso.

Ed’s poetry can be found in Rattle, The Evening Street Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, and several other journals. His work was recently anthologized in Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century as well. His first collection of poems, The Mise en Abyme Jokebook, was pub-lished in 2019 by UnCollected Press.