"Terminal 162" by Ellen Zhang

Terminal 162

You say maybe we are just birds trapped in an airport. Syllables unfurl, nuances flutter in my mind. Picture collar bone soft wrens flying around alarmed. Blossoming blood. Crashing collarbones.  

Swaths of sunlight catch in my sweater. Existence marked. For a moment. Stand still or dive without resurfacing. Nobody knows how sweet air is until they are drowning. Death is caught somewhere between surviving and living. Thousand times unknowingly born within golden spirals. 

My mother shifts through aromas of remedies. Sealing generations into every flick of her wrist. Clutched in her hand are small, elegant leaves. This is how. Concentration draped across her brow. I am trapped within 162 & flight cannot save me now.  

Ellen Zhang

Ellen Zhang is a student at Harvard Medical School, who has studied under Pulitzer-Prize-winner Jorie Graham, poet Rosebud Ben-Oni, and poet Josh Bell. She has been recognized by the 2022 DeBakey Poetry Prize, 2022 Dibase Poetry Contest, and as 2019 National Student Poet Semifinalist. Her works appear or are forthcoming in Southward Literary Journal, Rappahannock Review, COUNTERCLOCK Journal, and elsewhere.

Headshot: Fang Cao

Photo Credit: Olivia Baer