the porch light is off And “Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

By Isabella Dunsby

the porch light is off

and I’m holding a pint tub of yogurt ice cream
with both hands. I’m watching it sweat

white beads onto my lap like
the droplets of milk that an infant can’t 

quite catch on his mother’s breast. I’m watching us 
all convince ourselves we’re better off immortal.

I’m on my mother’s doorstep. All that rhythm 
in the downbeats of my mother’s 

slices while she’s making seaFood. 
when we dissected a pig’s liver 

some people felt personally
offended by the stench. I didn’t  

because solitude whispers into my throat 
when I think of anything existential. mouth 

to mouth with solitude is like noticing the 
wrinkled skin sagging off my mother’s neck. 

if I sit here too long I’ll convince 
myself we’re rational enough to live forever.

“Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

“cheers” 
is it the tinkle of 
bottle meeting giddiness 
or the clinking of my bones 
because i’m cold. is it
the stories of drunken delicious biting in 
neon-litten nightclubs, sneaking 
past docile non-id’ers because
christ, we were only ten six years ago. 
is it the pheromone of {im}maturity seeping 
from our foreheads as
we grind to the bass notes of ‘young dumb and broke’ 
playing off speakers.
is it mindlessness 
or conscious coming of age, God’s pick.
in the moments between 
your first clink 
and 
everything that follows,
what are you waiting for?

Isabella (Jia) Dunsby is a student at Seoul Foreign School in South Korea and will graduate in 2024. She enjoys creative writing, economics, photography, and jazz music on rainy
nights. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Polyphony Lit, Apprentice Writer, Blue Marble Review, and Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine.