Fair Weather

Michelle Li, United States

Finally, night. When you leave this place, remember

these last moments; your father asking for the tab,

refraction of water out of plastic cups at a local

restaurant, aftertaste of salted fish. It matters to be

young, but youth is synonymous with leaving.

It kills me to leave, but I threaten it; mother,

love me or I will catch the furthest flight next summer.

When it rained, I dreamed

of purposefully falling for the movie scene to appear:

young girl with pink-skinned knees crying for

childhood. The weather pitifully bright.

Can you believe it, my mother is saying.

You will never have this again.

Michelle Li has been nationally recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, Bennington Young Writers Awards, and Apprentice Writer. An alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and the Adroit Summer Mentorship, her work is forthcoming or published in Up the Staircase Quarterly, wildscape. literary, and Frontier Poetry. She is editor in chief of Hominum Journal, editor of The Dawn Review, and reads for Ex-Puritan. In addition, she plays violin and piano, loves Rachmaninoff, blackberries, and the rain.