In The Beginning There Was a Husky
Carolyn Tung
A boy tickled the tufts of her ears and she followed him home.
She was given a human name and ate human food. In return, she listened to the echo
of his conch-cave heart when he came home one day with an eye hallowed out from
a white boy’s baseball, like the pit from which a radish is ravaged.
What is it to be a star hole-punched into an ear, a meteor ollieing across the
green bay, the cowlick of a boy.
Something braver than this.
What, what, what.
In time the husky is tied to a tree. The boy’s lights are off, so she blinks at the fireflies
tracing the East Harlem graffiti. The moon, a rabbit’s silver ventriloquizing the gradients
of history. Of yet another one who must learn to see the world through glasses.
This time, it’s Peter Pan & the Lost Chinamen.
This time, it’s the Jade Rush--
the fastest to become jaded by man wins.
At dusk, the husky licks the boy’s cheek and cries with him, his scrubs a whorl of wet. In
his gathered memories, there is a tattooed circle of neverminds. There is
a secret. That in this bloodline empire, a pirate patch won’t eclipse the hurt.
That on good boy planet, filial piety carved its last breath.
Under the tree, two sleepwalkers fading their vision of this world.
In time they forget the vocabularies of their births, reverse into infancy before
mutation poisons the body.
Before anyone can see or be seen.
What the boy learns those nights:
Without a body, even a mirror
can learn to ward off ghosts.
She was given a human name and ate human food. In return, she listened to the echo
of his conch-cave heart when he came home one day with an eye hallowed out from
a white boy’s baseball, like the pit from which a radish is ravaged.
What is it to be a star hole-punched into an ear, a meteor ollieing across the
green bay, the cowlick of a boy.
Something braver than this.
What, what, what.
In time the husky is tied to a tree. The boy’s lights are off, so she blinks at the fireflies
tracing the East Harlem graffiti. The moon, a rabbit’s silver ventriloquizing the gradients
of history. Of yet another one who must learn to see the world through glasses.
This time, it’s Peter Pan & the Lost Chinamen.
This time, it’s the Jade Rush--
the fastest to become jaded by man wins.
At dusk, the husky licks the boy’s cheek and cries with him, his scrubs a whorl of wet. In
his gathered memories, there is a tattooed circle of neverminds. There is
a secret. That in this bloodline empire, a pirate patch won’t eclipse the hurt.
That on good boy planet, filial piety carved its last breath.
Under the tree, two sleepwalkers fading their vision of this world.
In time they forget the vocabularies of their births, reverse into infancy before
mutation poisons the body.
Before anyone can see or be seen.
What the boy learns those nights:
Without a body, even a mirror
can learn to ward off ghosts.
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Carolyn Tung (CMC '24) is a lover of eggs, blush, and the moon.
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