Find X by Grace Q. Song
Editorial intern Laura Billow on today’s bonus short: Grace Q. Song's "Find X" made me question the way I view the world and all its wonders. Her story is like an adult version of a child's imagination running wild inside the unknown.
Find X
First, read the question with distrust. The world is only a platter of bones in soft skin. Ponder the creation of Twinkies at 3 A.M. Why penguins can’t fly and if they want to talk to a therapist about it. Gather the right information: one hundred dolphins wash ashore in South Africa. Or maybe they're rubber duckies, size XL. How the dead give you permission to live. The moon as it becomes less and less mysterious. If kissing is because of your loneliness, feral and untouchable. Add them up. Carry over wisteria. Subtract the poems that ran away. Let go of the dust bunnies under your bed that you just can’t keep. When you’ve found x, go back and check your work. Search for lost coins. Ask your heart to keep on thrumming. Call your lover to confirm dinner at seven. Say, I am interested in loving you more.
Grace Q. Song is a Chinese-American writer from New York. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in The Shallow Ends, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, DIALOGIST, Crab Creek Review, Up the Stairs Quarterly, Into the Void, [PANK], and elsewhere. A high school junior, she reads for Polyphony Lit and Bitter Melon Magazine. She is a 2019 Best of Net nominee.
