Equinox Lily

By: M. Nova

You never bloomed every summer—

even when the heat blistered

There were islands

shores too dazzling, too barren

whispered about

never touched

We planted the dead there

equinoctial lilies

drenched them in tears

cheap vodka

If you once brushed their petals—

why go quiet now

so lethal?

Bees swarmed what you adored

stripped the blossoms to bone

Quick hands, sugar-drunk

stinking of a first sin

Who was I to take it?

Who were you to let me?

We lived scattered—

on the road today

adrift yesterday buried tomorrow

Forecast?

No safe passage

At my door—

a thousand arrows waiting

Twist the handle

lean into the corridor

you vanished through

and it happens—

the strike

The bowstring’s been drawn for years

It never misses.

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M.Nova is a poet and data science student whose work moves between fracture and clarity, searching for the pulse beneath language. Writing in both Chinese and English, she explores memory as a shifting architecture, the residue of choice, and the tension between intimacy and disappearance. Her poems often cross borders—between disciplines, between silence and speech, between the ordinary and the uncanny—seeking what resists capture yet refuses to vanish.