i. Light the sandalwood & ember against lotus leaves. I let the ox and horse back in, like a pale cloak surrender.

ii. Bring forth the antler decoction. A mantis pouch pulled out of its shell. Picking bitter herbs before sunrise. Place fresh mandarins next to the soursops and dragon fruit. Upon needling, I morph into a circular kiss against a dragonfly’s hindleg.

iii. I am learning to birth pearls from a dull knife. Reverse cottonmouth when I morph into my own sadness. A polished stone was once a tooth-ached mountain, foaming salty glaciers with a chapped mouth. I conjure a tail husking in the rippling breeze.

iv. I am given safflower obituaries across my cheeks. I gather the stones together. Speckling jade swept in by windy tides. The incense conjures slowly today. The swallow warbles shiny trinkets close to her chest.

v. Today, I am milking muddy spring waters from my lung’s grief. I still remember ants dotting over puckered skin, thinking, I will always hold onto the pastoral of their eyes — crinkling with the sun — pacifying the wind.

vi. Time is an archer that grazes the feather of its prey. Brocade me to a pulp of stillness. I clutch the fear from my shoulder to its loops lassoing around my back. The back of my eye sockets sinking into the earth.

vii. Violin bow tailed stallion. Ladybugs camouflages with the beady field mice. Labrador returns when I call pray. A salmon swims upstream to learn how to become home again.

viii. I fold my liver into its green hunger. Its carnivorous anger makes a home in my sour gums. I leave a note of magpie songs for the splitting primordial.

ix. In my dream, Ah Po’s sister makes a drainpipe out of the hook of my left rib. All the sour tang from gummed sponges and wishing rocks flush out. I give myself more water to pour upon its murky reflection.

x. My knuckles curve down an archival bookend of lonely ghosts. Over a slow burn, I watch the coils summer when the mosquitoes are thrush out for revenge. Blood slices all the sweet callings.

xi. I wonder if this is the song only-childs hear? A stag mounted against loneliness. Does a split tongue remember a cry from the root of its ululation? Its own language axed with every curved breath.

xii. Place findings onto the ancestral altar. Whisper incantations from a mourning crow. The bone-shards divorcing its skin. Root the incense against my pumice palms. I pocket onto the knick knacks, the keepsakes — even the particles.