“Strawberry Blond (with lines borrowed from Mitski)” by Mackenzie Duan

Look at the light over these hills, 

like honey 

bleeding from our shoulders. 

We picnic with cream cake and bananas 

at the valley’s crown, where the river

is barking, blushing, twined by bone. 

Stippled fences. The grass left a bed 

in your shape. I sleep like a log

sagging with moss. Look at the pleated bellies

of the hills, the trailless ivy. This sky

is a stranger. You are someone I will know. A life 

in your shape. We paint likenesses of heaven,

roll napkins into rings, ginger fanning 

from your breath as you whistle. I picture it, 

soft. As a sunset in gouache. Look at you, 

blonde, breakless, 

plunking through the milk grass 

barefoot & radiating blades. 

You never die. Nectar soaks

our pasts and I ache. For so long 

I thought the final lyric was desire, 

desire, desire.

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Mackenzie Duan is a high schooler from the Bay Area. Their work has been recognized by Youngarts, Princeton University, and The Poetry Society. They love Mac Miller and rain.