I drive with shoulders pulled tight, like it will hel me fit on streets

I planted words like seeds beneath my driveway in the construction trench that felt like a metaphor for all the ways I was torn open.

Yan Sison is a poet based on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Some of his works were published in Pearls, a creative writing anthology.

I have not seen Lewis for some time. Over three years now, but somewhere along the way the time got warped in my head.

I will say that I have touched her hands and let them go. I am filled with this lingering and fading.

Here’s how it went down: S bought another book

i wandered in and around and up and down dead beat streets and watched as cleaners washed away the tackle with the tide

Far, far away in a state known as Florida a teacher, curly hair coiffed

it is lunchtime & the countertops are green with stains like continents,

I used to dream I was standing on a little hill by my childhood home next to my mother who was teaching me to fly

Before our FaceTime call today, I told myself not to melt if you start squinting at me. It sounds ridiculous when I say it like that, but you and I both know there are certain expressions that affect people more than declarations ever could.

For years, I have lived in a cage

It was a Thursday. A Thursday like any other Thursday, he thought, except that on this Thursday, Thomas was running late.

Mum’s smile swings like a rocking chair across her face. ‘I’m here, darling,’ she whispers.