Here We Go Again

By Minghan Zou

Previously published in Tap Into Poetry

Let’s say it’s the roar of the engines - 
whirring mechanical creatures
it might as well be magic.

Let’s say it’s how clocks don’t work anymore - 
After all, what’s the point of Barcelona time
When all I know are 
a sleeping Shanghai
a jetlagged Boston
that seem impossibly apart?

Let’s say it’s the cry of someone’s baby - 
so irrefutably human
so piercing
so hard to ignore
a reminder of the life 
10,000 feet below
12 hours behind.

Maybe it’s the airquakes
Yes I call them that —

Trembling boards
Shuddering like a ship
In a storm –
Within clouds
Among stars.

“Be Calm”
Said through the radio

As if we’re not in a tin rocket compressed
by currents
and the lack thereof of air
and soil.

Here
the floor
invites no ducking for cover
no running out 

Just the fastening of seatbelts
and keeping calm.

But no
it’s the night that presses in
Above, around
even below my feet
Leaving only the
bathroom lights and the gallium glow
of my laptop.
Losing my mind.

So
through this rainless storm
I settle myself in writing
3 more hours

Before the sea splits and spins
Daylight and daybreak
into

Here, and home.

Minghan Zou is a junior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Originally from China, his writing focuses on isolation, identity, natural wonder, and culture. He has been published in schoolwide publications, including the Asian Magazine, and is working on a manuscript. He also published in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology, and his recent poem, “Father, Floating,” is forthcoming in the Beyond Words father-themed anthology.