Enya Fang’s writing has received national accolades from CBC Books, A&E Network, and the Royal Canadian Legion. She has been published in multiple print and digital anthologies, most recently Lonely Planet (Polar Expressions 2023). Having previously lived in China and Singapore, she now attends high school in Vancouver, Canada. Find her on Instagram at @enyaaa.f
CREDENCE
Moonrise shudders in black sea, smoothed by tides that grease your feet. A shrine. On the shoreline, wind slaps sand on your cheeks & rakes salt-soaked air. Come closer,
it croons & phantasm makes you submissive. Wading deeper, water tugging at your limbs, marionette. Laughter behind the fog. Closer. You grasp for the moon but
it slips away like brine & the string that holds you snaps. Above, the gods sip on nectar as you plunge into seething foam. Again, they cast the line. Again, you teeth the bait.
NIGHTSHADE
this wasteland grows flowers without threats
until day fades to dusk & your hyacinths are
bombs with roots & roses bleed buried loves &
tulips shed your mother’s smile & dandelions
cast seeds like cursed coins into wishing wells.
AUBADE
willow bends with emotion
moon crinkles like origami
rain drives glass needles
sky yawns yesterday’s song
HEARTH
Night smothers the city, settling
like dead leaves. Loud but colorless.
Whiplashed faces stare down the
winter, shawled by smoke & white
fog. We will not be tamed. Outside,
carried by the sawdust wind, a lone
nightingale keens for home. It bleeds
through the cookie-cutter fences &
scratches at our windows, as if to say
we already know this cage by touch
WEREWOLVES
taught me to swallow ice & spit
out blood & let their guttural vices
claw my throat as if the night-fabric
could stitch our half-human cries
into a body meant for this world.
GHOSTS
are not transparent but
solid cargoes
of regret. They are splintered
fatherly bonds
flowers that wilt when the rain
picks favorites
& dull knives wrenched into
calloused hearts.
They roam graveyards for
ruined things
littering the chilly circle of
dead tombstones
chained to moonlight. Like
price tags
you never could throw away.