i'm doing the dishes by touch in the dark

because like my mother i love everything that does not breathe

as consumption, meaning i bloom throat outwards, lotus-paste

foaming up. google search are magnolia blooms toxic even as i

unpeel their petals from my teeth. look up flower-language

in a dialect that knows submission, that disappears on the page.

they say every rice-grain left in the bowl is a pockmark on the face

of the person you’ll marry, so i leave enough to let the chopsticks

stand upright & wonder how deep you have to bury an explosion

so no one aboveground feels a thing, wonder whether six feet

is enough. swallow the calendula blossom that floats in the teacup

& say this is done out of guilt / say this is done out of love.

say the mint-plants were aching for their roots to be wrenched

from the soil, that the berries would’ve rotted on the vine. this

is how to be useful, to be used & understood, to wait oil-glazed

until the moment when there is nothing left to offer

& the love switches off with the lights.

Quinn Lui is a Chinese-Canadian student whose work has appeared in Occulum, Synaesthesia Magazine, Half Mystic, and elsewhere. They are the author of the micro-chapbook teething season for new skin (L’Éphémère Review, 2018) and can easily be bribed by soup dumplings or pictures of bees. You can find them @flowercryptid on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, or wherever the moon is brightest.