Eternity on a raft-bed

By Loan Tran

Immortals attain longevity in peaches
ripened after six thousand years,
so mother pounds peach blossoms
into my spine. Stand straighter, but
I don’t have the soul for it, which
she doesn’t accept. Because I am
practical, I seek immortality in a forest of white
linen that wraps into a cavern steeping
in lavender. Some nights, I reconstruct
the constellation Vega on my ceiling, then trace
her again beneath my eyelids. The wind collects
in the valleys of my collar bone. My parents
are the mountains lining the sea, they are
the oars I use to row out to the Isles
of the Blessed. I take hold of their hands
and plunged them into the depths
of my bones. Some nights, I sink
my fingers into the wet sockets of my eyes,
searching the eternal water garden for twin
moons: gouge them out and keep them
as pearls. Swallow one to sleep,
the other, to dream.

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Loan Tran graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and currently lives and writes in Austin, TX.