Only

Hand me something beautiful and breakable. Please. I’m tired, and this world is a hassle of metal. Give me fur and manure. Fireworks that are live red capillaries bursting. Hand me a poem round and fragile as an egg in the small of a warm palm. Only the smallest of creatures. Only a fingertip's tremor of a heartbeat. Darling, the thinness of your nails are moonly and murderous when against the scalp of the smallest bird. Keep your hand open where the feathered thing lies, as if staying alive is a choice. A wound, a lost tooth. Wind and leaves against the asphalt like the sound of pages turning. The truth is I can only handle so much. Hand me my life in a bag of blood that I don't recognise the colour of. I'll carry it with both my arms through the cemetery gridded like calendars. Hand me my days and nights. All I can take, and more. Darling, I am stumbling, stumbling. Save me your last card, undealt. Save it for me alone. I am selfish in ways I don't quite understand. I am lonelier than imagination. Like an only child, I will live once and nurse my secrets through the dark garden, singing, My only thing. My because; because; because;

Xiaole Zhan is a Chinese-New Zealand writer and composer currently based in Naarm where they are completing their third year of university studies. They are the winner of the 2023 Landfall Young Writers’ Essay Competition. Their name in Chinese, '小乐', means 'Little Happy' but may also be read as 'Little Music'.