Features

You in the fog watering the potted flowers,

I envision with one eye closed

Giant peonies, one bunch pale pink 

The other deep magenta

Wai po’s wrinkled hands, my chopped bangs and 

Bowl cut, and jars of pickled pepper paste 

I am waiting for the right weather to leave. 

In the closet four silverfish swathed in lint

And nowhere to run 

So I hid in the rose print 

Of my old duvet, the television playing 

Chinese soap operas 

And the hushed scraping of snow 

Falling in neat piles and the time 

As loud red numbers in the dark.

Is this where we must go 

The nebulous rain? my fallen hair collecting 

With the cat’s on the carpet,

Imagine a shadow pressed against the wet 

Window until it bruises or maybe

Vacancy is a state of forgetting. 

Maybe we are just forgetting.

Adelia Du's poem won first prize in the Tent Annual Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Writing Contest. Adelia also won first prize in 2022 for her poem "Ant Eater." Adelia is a BFA Illustration major who graduated this spring. She is from McLean, Virginia and loves cats. Judges Emily Blake & Merlin Ural Rivera had this to say about Adelia's prize-winning entry: