By: Carrie Liang
every day, my grandmother’s clock loses three minutes.
it showed us that time bends around the people we love
long before we understand physics by living
in its own time zone by March.
like rent, daylight saving time takes an hour.
we bother to cover the cost. nd so we never get it back.
cherry blossoms are aware of this:
they are beautiful on a timer, pink against concrete, and break on purpose.
blood cells have a 120-day lifespan.
you’ve changed since the previous season.
i hardly recognize the girl who sobbed at that awards show
like it mattered because it’s cellular evidence
that change isn’t metaphor but rather mitosis, which happens automatically.
in order to locate their home, ants count their steps.
if you put them on stilts, they overshoot;
if you cut their legs, they stop short.
i’ve been walking on stilts for years,
past the places i used to know,
wondering why the distance feels off.
before march sang knives in backs,
it meant debt collection.
et tu? simply means you too?
every betrayal is customary.
every spring, we are taken aback
when winter doesn’t leave quietly.
a girl at the auto show
presses her hand to a car she’ll never own,
feeling the future through fiberglass.
we construct things beyond our means
and call it progress.
chrome gods that promise freedom
but only know the route to work.
intellectual bulimia.
the day i bookmarked an article about information overload,
i discovered this term.
never read it.
somewhere in the 847 tabs i keep open,
like if i close them i’ll forget i meant to care.
bumblebees shouldn’t fly.
the math doesn’t work.
but there’s honey,
so reality doesn’t care about the math.
march takes its name from war,
or from dying in battle,
depending on which dead language you trust.
either way: spring is invasion.
crocuses hiding under snow like landmines,
mud season for the messy aftermath,
daylight advancing an hour at a time,
a slow crawl.
the spring equinox? simply geometry.
earth tilting at just the right angle,
light and dark holding their breath
at the same time.
we’ve always needed math to feel less alone.
pi going on forever because circles refuse to end.
fractals in ferns because patterns repeat
and repetition resembles meaning.
women’s history month.
we get march because rome gave it to their war god.
there’s something perfect about
having to fight for a month
already named for fighting.
every first woman, first surgeon, first astronaut, first anything,
is just another way of saying
i survived showing up.