I Stayed Up All Night

searching for a poem in all the usual places:
the house where I found my first voice, 
the school that awarded me my second
(complete with a shiny new tongue), 
every city my skin had ever brushed
to become a canvas for my fingerprints, 
freeways and pavements fast under my feet, 
fleeting clouds and waves that once tossed my tracks. 
I probed every last muscle memory, 
every inch of nerve, leaving no bone unturned. 

But the poem had long mastered
our game of hide-and-seek, played
the passive role on countless occasions
and knew exactly where I’d look, hip to
our old haunts. It was too clever now
to be caught in the cargo
pocket of a stowaway’s coat.
I began believing in
the speculative then, breathing in
hypotheticals like lost air:
places I’d never been
(but always dreamed to go), 
places I’d thought to visit in the future
(if only I weren’t afraid to leave), 
those mindworn places that might not even exist. 

So I traveled farther, found further
voices hidden beyond my throat
(surreal speech that stretched the limits
of my listless lips and idle teeth), 
danced alongside strangers
to the rhythm of our irregular heartbeats, 
buried my roots into the earth of other worlds
and grew and grew and grew, 
folded my wiry body into a flowerbed
to rest my tired head,
then slept through the night
(once more) like an unborn baby, 
and in the morning when I woke, 
discovered the poem
was waiting there for me.

Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her literary/visual art has appeared in nearly a hundred publications. She loves to dance. Find more at https://susanllin.com.