October Volta

I’m forgetting to un-remember
the world turning in your gaze,
like the wheels of a carbon fiber bike

how all of life’s extremities end where you begin:
an open beach road into your stoop,
the sun into an egg yolk over toast

sometimes I think I see you clearer
when you’re not here, like a kite,
the type of wonder that elevates with distance

you, holly against evergreen,
like Christmas morning in July
& somewhere
firecrackers were burning,
pulling smoke over the hills

how is California so fast
to consume itself in flames again?
razing fields to the ground,
as if it’d rather paint itself
red than wait for fall

I’m trying to reconcile the difference
between how nature is,
and how I want it to be,
how seasonal depression
is just forgetting to remember
summer will return
if I let it go

Helen Wang is a graduate from Swarthmore College with Honors in Economics and English Literature. Outside of her full-time job at a cancer data health tech start-up in New York City, she attends poetry workshops at the 92Y and serves on the Haitian Global Health Alliance BoardPlus. Her poetry focuses on themes of femininity and love, coming of age, and the Asian American experience.