Origin Story: Apollo Speaks
by Esther Sun
After Northern California (2020)
Years ago when I lived
in the hills, fog filled cypress gaps
like words, like sons in doorways.
That was when I carved
my second lyre: out of the spines
of forests practiced
in shaping openings. Back then
I caught birds for fun
and gripped them
in my hands until evening,
fingers wrapped over wings, heat
souring my skin as I pretended
to be holding suns. Back then
I never felt
naive. Yes I was still that
young. I sent sailors across the Aegean
just to see something mine
survive. I drafted poems: piles
of ribbons, not yet pulsing
things. I still thought there was
a difference between fabric
and skin, didn’t yet know how
to dissolve them in my head
as one, trying to learn creation
the way autumn walks
itself out of the summer’s
dead. In my defense, I was ruinous.
I reached for more
than what could fill me. So when the bird-suns
turned into fires
and flattened
the mountainside raw — nothing
remained but lightness, the question
of what was still an opening
and what was just empty space.
Years ago when I lived
in the hills, fog filled cypress gaps
like words, like sons in doorways.
That was when I carved
my second lyre: out of the spines
of forests practiced
in shaping openings. Back then
I caught birds for fun
and gripped them
in my hands until evening,
fingers wrapped over wings, heat
souring my skin as I pretended
to be holding suns. Back then
I never felt
naive. Yes I was still that
young. I sent sailors across the Aegean
just to see something mine
survive. I drafted poems: piles
of ribbons, not yet pulsing
things. I still thought there was
a difference between fabric
and skin, didn’t yet know how
to dissolve them in my head
as one, trying to learn creation
the way autumn walks
itself out of the summer’s
dead. In my defense, I was ruinous.
I reached for more
than what could fill me. So when the bird-suns
turned into fires
and flattened
the mountainside raw — nothing
remained but lightness, the question
of what was still an opening
and what was just empty space.
Esther Sun is a Chinese-American writer from the Silicon Valley. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she received a Gold Medal Portfolio Award in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has published poems in Cotton Xenomorph, Half Mystic Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere.