Issue 003 – butterfly effect

Katie Liao

Butterfly Effect

You were the best thing that happened to me
says the makeshift father projected
through a beam underground
and the train passing by mumbles
a secret to the core of the earth
sending a shiver down some ridge
where the weight of water
crushes a person to death
how even in dreams
my burning fingers crawl
back to this animal heart
each night the bare pin oak
raises its arms to protect the sky

Katie Liao was born and raised in Hsinchu, Taiwan. She earned her BA in Computer Science from New York University, where she first began writing poems. Her work has appeared in West 10th, Spires, The Weasel, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an LLM at National Taiwan University.