Saltwater Saints

Alexis Wu, United States

i.

I want to forgive my childhood self,

but this is purgatory: every glistening sky

comes stitched with a lining of citrus tears.

It was us, hanging upside down by our knees,

saints in reverse,

dreaming of a love big enough

to one day save us.

But the only saving grace we were ever taught

was death, and this is why your name

lies in the graveyard of my old church,

drowning in ivy: forgotten.

ii.

We baptized ourselves

in beer and holy water,

in strangers screaming in the wrong language.

Caramel dusks, candied apples,

all rotting to dirt and worms

in bleached autumn wind.

When heaven was a place,

and the world was a vacation spot,

when you asked me, once, are we going to hell?

and I replied, probably,

and you smiled and you took my hand

as we waited for the tide to take us away.

iii.

When my pain turned into seafoam,

and I whispered my prayers into the sand,

I visited your grave, drowning in apologies.

We were just kids, etching our names

into the silent church pews,

believing we’d live forever

and that living forever was a good thing.

I stood by the beach and cried,

soaking my sins in saltwater,

seeking a salvation that would never find me.

This is the divinity, the trinity, the amity.

Alexis Wu is a Chinese-American poet from New York. She co-authored Under the Deep, a poetry collection exploring buried truths. Her works are published in Commuter Lit, Yin Literary, and Aorta Literary Magazine. She is Newsletter Coordinator at Write Cause, Scholastic Gold Key recipient, and EIC of her school magazine. She should probably stop romanticizing her life and start living it—but where's the fun in that? Find her Instagram @a.w.underthedeep.poetry.