I stole your wish.
I brushed it off your cheek when you weren’t looking.
I thought of putting it in my pocket
to keep the other wishes happy,
but then what if they bullied it—
what makes many happy won’t make one happy.
so I let it sit on my finger, your wish,
and it curled around my thumb like a ring,
its weight reminding me, beckoning me to use it.
© 2023 Emily Jiang
Emily Jiang is the author of Summoning the Phoenix: Poems & Prose about Chinese Musical Instruments, which won the Best Book of the Year from the Chinese American Librarian Association and was listed among the Best Children’s Books of the Year at Kirkus Reviews & The Huffington Post. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California and a BA in English from Rice University. Her poetry and prose have been published at Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, and Weird Tales, among others.
